Hope

What do you love about where you live?

I love the way
we try to care for one another;

the little free pantries
on street corners
stocked with cans and jars
that fill the bellies
of hungry schoolchildren.

Volunteers leaning over
steaming pots of curry
and spaghetti,
serving their neighbors
who wait with tired eyes.

We carry each other
when we are broken,
offering a shoulder
even when our own hearts ache.

The map of this city
is drawn with kindness.

You can see it
in the dandelions
reaching for the sun
from cracks in the sidewalk,

and in the hands that reach out –
because hope lives,
heavy and real,
in their open palms.