Tag: hope (Page 1 of 2)

a double rainbow against blue sky over field — Photo by Coralie Meurice on Unsplash

Colors

1 November 2026 / Editor

Nonfiction by Jill Sisson

At first I think it’s a blemish on the kitchen wall, high in the corner where my soapy sponge can’t reach. Then I see it’s a resting moth, sleeping like a small golden leaf waiting to awaken at the end of the day. To search for another dusty-winged soul, to pull the future into their soft reach.

The purple-haired sophomore in my 4th period class, another solo soul.

And the senior who smashed his hand into a table, his hot-pink cast messy with signatures as he strategically fails three of his classes. The future is not something he wants. He’s not ready to fledge; the white-walled world is no refuge for his Muslim/Mexican blend.

Dark is not the worst place to be, with the espresso-brown soil of Earth, with ancestors’ songs and permanent dreams, the ones I keep close to the campfire when I travel away. Away to where the stars gleam. Where bats and coyotes have their say.

It’s mid-morning when an admiral butterfly tastes the rim of my blue plastic cup, as though the caffeine from breakfast or the salts from my fingers fuel her day-long flights of black, white, and stripes of gold. A twitchy chipmunk bounds toward my picnic table, eyes alert, his tail like a wind-tossed weed. The rush of wind high in the boughs, like a river bending our lives.

Dear Mom,

We’ve had our hard times, but I saw a double rainbow late this afternoon.

They used to say that rainbows are the arcs of hope, that God graced our flooded lands with a hoop of colors to save us from despair. Did you get the Billy Graham book I sent you?

There are rainbows everywhere. I keep taking photos of them. There’s one I took for my blog, a tiny rainbow skating across an insect’s lost wing caught on a spider web. (A rainbow on a wing on a web.) And those beautiful rainbow-streaks up in the cirrus clouds—can you still see those? I think they’re called sun dogs. Colorado used to get a lot of those compared to here in Oregon. My friend Tracy (she’s earning her PhD in marine science, you two never met) doesn’t believe in hope, but she studies tiny mollusks that glint like rainbows under her microscope. I guess I’m saying there’s always reason for hope if you look hard enough for it.

Anyway, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Call me when you can. xoxo

In loving memory: Alzheimers, January 24, Weld County Colorado

Jill Sisson is a naturalist and educator from Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Her writing is situated in that sweet spot where the everyday overlaps with the ineffable. Western settings, stretching from the Colorado Rockies to the Pacific Northwest, backdrop most of her written work. She has been published in Emerge 24.

a blue seahorse floating underwater — Photo by Gary Walker-Jones on Unsplash

Holdfast

1 September 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Amy Nash

I wish I could be there for the seahorse
when she growls.
Build a coral cave for privacy

when she and her future mate begin to click.
I wish I could propel myself
slowly through eelgrass beds

and sing of sunken nights as I reach the next
stratified layer in the water column
without choking on the wait.

Amy Nash has lived in every northern state between Massachusetts and Minnesota (except for Wisconsin and Michigan), resulting in brackish poetry that mixes the Mississippi River with the Great Lakes, Atlantic Ocean, and everything between. Her poems have appeared in a range of journals and anthologies.

For the Eastern Bluebird

10 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Danita Dodson

She cleaves the quivering air,
her wings spun from prismed light,
feathered at the meadow’s hem.
We script her joy as weightless,
crown her myth against the dark,
watch her wake the sleeping sky.
What we forget in our dreaming—
her days are edged with struggle,
with hunger, with starlings’ theft.

A mother seeking a hallow home,
she nestles where rot gives room,
cradling life in shifting shadows.

Still she returns, undiminished—
fledgling-feeder, hope-bringer,
tracing rites on warming winds.

She finds her way home at dusk,
tastes the thaw on the earth’s breath,
sounding the spring’s first song.

Danita Dodson is the author of three poetry collections: Trailing the Azimuth, The Medicine Woods, and Between Gone and Everlasting. Her poems appear in Salvation South and elsewhere. She is the 2024 winner of the Poetry Society of Tennessee’s Best of Fest. She lives in Sneedville, Tennessee. More at danitadodson.com.

On the Cusp of Spring

1 April 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Stacie Eirich

She walks the river slow, savors
the soft touch of air and glow
of sunlight on her skin. Listens
to the rush and ripple of water,
watches squirrels climb trees and ducks
forage grass for worms. Feels the gentleness
of the coming spring, a space
in her mind, heart, lungs, womb
opening for it, welcoming it.

She leans into
this brightness, inhales—time blooming
into bursts of birdsong and promises
of what the world can still mend
and create anew. This season
of beaming gold, of riotous laughter,
of gentleness, of tenderness. Care-born
from love, love for windswept wings,
branches bright in April’s light.

Winter’s shadow trailing behind
the cusp of spring, gathering
to carry her—into buoyant light, into a song
brilliant with hope, burgeoning with wonder
promising this time
will be softer, this time
will be easier.

She begins to believe this might be true
as she walks: listening, letting what we feel come
then releasing it, letting the glow
of sunlit cyan waters, the slow burn
of gold and blue and green settle
into her, allowing space
for spring to crack open
like a robin’s egg, breaking open
joy, beginning anew.

Stacie Eirich is a mother of two, poet and singer. Hope Like Sunlight (Bell Asteri Publishing, 2024), is her memoir benefitting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital & Ronald McDonald House. Her poems have recently been published in The Poetry Lighthouse, Soul Poetry, and The Amazine. She lives in Texas. Read more at www.stacieeirich.com

The First Monarch

1 February 2026 / Editor

Poetry by Katy Z. Allen

I caught a glimpse today of hope—
the first monarch of the summer
flitted past the window,
catching my eye with its bright orange wings.

A striking orange is on display as well in the wood lilies,
whose blooming each year reminds me of my Aunt Lorraine,
a crusty New England Yankee
who always knew what was what,
accepted me without question
no matter what was changing in my life,
and who so many years ago gave me bulbs from her garden.

Today, I stumbled on a picture of her that I didn’t remember,
sitting in her New Hampshire summer garden,
and another of her with my two sons,
smiling and laughing,
when they were much younger.

My Aunt Lorraine never gave up,
never gave in
and always kept her chin up,
and thoughts of her
remind me of the butterfly
and hope.

Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world. She founded and led an outdoor congregation and a Jewish climate organization. Her poetry has appeared in online publications and her poetic book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing.

Marie’s Wings

14 October 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Kandi Maxwell

“I want to fly,” my four-year-old granddaughter, Marie, says. “Me too,” I say. We’re watching a My Little Pony video. Some of the ponies fly. Her favorite is Rainbow Dash, a blue Pegasus with a rainbow-colored mane and tail. The pony’s wings are small, but Rainbow Dash can fly fast. Marie loves fast.

She also loves other real or imagined creatures with wings: birds, butterflies, and fairies. Marie is mesmerized by red-breasted robins or blue-bodied stellar’s jays as they flutter from tree to tree in my forest home. I watch as Marie runs beneath them clapping her hands, saying, “fly, fly.” Marie is also fascinated by the butterflies that hover over our lilac and rosemary bushes. She has a little green butterfly net, and occasionally she will capture one. Because of her autism, she’s speech delayed, but she makes happy sounds in her own language. She gently brushes her finger across one of the wings. I notice how the light catches the wings, creating a sparkling shimmer. After inspecting the butterfly, we find a place to re-home it in the large half-barrel filled with lavender, lemon balm, and thyme.

Later, on a trip to Mount Shasta, I find a little store that sells children’s red monarch butterfly wings made of a soft, light fabric. The winged cape has straps around the shoulders and loops around the wrists, allowing Marie to open and close the wings, her movements mimicking a butterfly. Back at my home, she dashes through the yard flapping her arms. “I’m flying, I’m flying,” she says. For a while, those wings are her favorite accessory. She wears her bright red cape everywhere we go.

Less than a year after I buy the wings, they are destroyed in the 2018 Paradise Camp Fire, along with her other cherished toys. In the years that follow the fire, Marie brings three grocery bags filled with her new special toys anytime she leaves home. She fears losing the things she loves, the purple dragon she had saved from the fire, her new little ponies, her fox, and kitten plushies.

Marie just turned twelve. She now has a good vocabulary with her own unique communication style, but talking about emotions is difficult. We don’t talk about the fire or the loss of her former home. But I know she’s had some healing. She no longer needs to bring three bags of toys when she visits, but the purple dragon always travels with her. And she still has the butterfly net.

On her latest visit, she captures a tiny, lustrous green frog. Marie tenderly holds it in her hand, while we walk it over to the half-barrel of herbs where she sets it free. Afterwards, she runs off with her net searching for butterflies through the soft spring grasses and up in the branches of the flowering apple trees. As I watch her run, I think about the traumas she’s faced at such a young age—the fire, numerous moves, COVID, and missed school years. The losses have been difficult, but like the butterflies, Marie soars. “Fly, Fly,” I say.

Kandi Maxwell is a creative nonfiction writer who lives in Northern California. Her stories have been published in Hippocampus Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Meadow, The Raven’s Perch, and many other literary journals and print anthologies. Learn more about Kandi’s writing at kandimaxwell.com.

Lying in Wait

1 August 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Jennifer Pinto

My dog, Josie, is barking at the kitchen window, warning me of an intruder. I look out into the front yard expecting to see deer or perhaps a wild turkey but if there is danger out there, I can’t see it. She continues jumping and pawing at the glass so I look outside again, this time glancing downward at the porch situated just below the window. It’s a snake. Its three foot long body is nestled and expertly blended into the wicker of my favorite chair but its head is levitating skyward, peeking into my kitchen window. I think about how many times I sat in that chair oblivious to this danger. This unexpected interloper upends the sense of tranquility and comfort I normally feel in my beautiful yard. I’m not sure I will ever be able to relax out there again.

It’s 2004 and we were sitting at the kitchen table having family dinner when my husband reached for the salt shaker and yelped in pain. He tried to dismiss it as nothing but I knew acknowledging any sort of discomfort was out of character for him so I insisted he make an appointment with the doctor right away. I suspected it might be something as simple as a pulled muscle or a gallstone but I was wrong. This sudden sharp pain in his right side led to a doctor’s visit then an ultrasound and finally a biopsy that confirmed my husband had cancer. Primary liver cancer. The surgeon discovered a baseball-sized mass on his otherwise pristine liver. There were no symptoms, no warning signs. It’s likely these cancer cells were hiding in his body for years until the mass grew large enough to cause pain. I was a young mom with children ages eight, five, and three. It felt like the life I had envisioned had suddenly been turned on its head.

I shoo the snake off the porch with a long handled broom and watch as it slithers into the landscaping and disappears. I spend days searching for holes and researching ways to deter snakes. I eventually return to my chair on the front porch but feel like I’m in a constant state of hypervigilance. One afternoon the mailman comes to my front door with a stack of letters in his hand. I can’t deliver your mail today he says as he pulls out his cell phone and shows me a picture of my mailbox. There is a long black snake slithering up the stones encasing the mailbox and blocking the door. It is the same snake I had seen on my porch and now I’m convinced its home is somewhere close to my own. It will be months before I walk down the wooded path to retrieve the mail without a large stick in my hand.

My husband had a liver resection to remove two thirds of his liver. The healthy portion was expected to regenerate. The pathologist reported that while it hadn’t spread outside of the liver, there was some vascular invasion which meant some cancer cells had escaped into his bloodstream and could be lying in wait to cause a recurrence in another part of his body. There was no way of knowing if the cancer would appear again. I learned how to hope for the best while being prepared for the worst. We signed our children up for “Walking the Dinosaur,” a children’s cancer support group to help them deal with their feelings. My husband coped by buying me a new set of garbage cans with wheels so I could easily bring the trash to the curb and by writing out passwords and instructions for me on how to pay the bills.

The snake is like a shadow that follows me around, a vague yet niggling thought in the back of my mind. So when the HVAC man who is servicing our air conditioning unit knocks on the door and says, Do you know there is a huge black snake in your yard? I just nod and say, I know. He is a burly guy with large tattooed biceps and a long goatee. I’m surprised when he admits the snake is making him jumpy. I am no longer afraid of the snake although I remain vigilant. While I hope I never see it again, I’ve become accustomed to the idea that encountering the snake is always a possibility.

After his liver resection, my husband was scanned every three months for several years. When the scans were eventually put on a yearly schedule, he started to feel confident enough in his health that he allowed me to buy him new shoes and new clothes again. He had refused any purchases until he could be certain he would live long enough to get good use out of them. It’s been twenty years since he was first diagnosed and he remains cancer-free.

Just last week, in our basement, we caught a baby snake in a glue trap meant for mice. I’m horrified that a snake could penetrate our walls and get so close. It prompts me to stay vigilant. I remind my husband he’s due for his next scan.

Jennifer Pinto writes both fiction and creative nonfiction. She has three grown children and lives in Cincinnati with her husband. She enjoys drinking coffee at all hours of the day. Her work has been published in The Citron Review, SunDog Lit, Lunch Ticket, The Bluebird Word and Muleskinner, among others.

Summer’s End

28 July 2025 / Editor

Nonfiction by Vicki Addesso

for Cathy

It’s now, this evening, and like this summer, I have grown older. Yes, summers grow old, and come to an end. On this last day of August, September’s eve, I sense autumn’s approach.

The mammoth sunflower growing all alone by the young maple tree in front of my house bobs its heavy head and sighs it seems to be getting dark earlier and earlier. It has never seen a summer before, does not know summer must end. Or that this is its last, its one and only. The bulbous center is bursting with fresh sunflower seeds, and come early morning I will watch the goldfinches come to pluck them out, and the bees indulge. The golden-yellow petals are many and flutter in the tiniest of breezes yet remain put. That stem, so thick and straight and tall, sways for the wind in storms and refuses to break. Before the flower at its top bloomed, I thought of Jack and his beanstalk. Could I climb the stem and find a giant in the clouds?

The lonely sunflower, from leftover seeds I dropped next to the baby tree after running out of room in the backyard gardens. Only this one of the dozen or so seeds casually tossed into the dirt grew. The backyard has many other sunflowers, autumn beauties and sunspots and Little Beckas that had bloomed a couple of weeks earlier. Some are still vibrant, others wilting. They will not wither in loneliness; they have one another. But that sunflower out in front of the house, it rips at my heart, knows nothing of its fate. Its single solitary life that will fade as this summer ends. Trees, shrubs, other plants and other creatures share a world in our front yard and have more, some many, summers ahead of them. No worries, sweet sunflower, I whisper through the window screen. After the crispness of fall, the cold of winter, the promise of spring, I will plant more seeds. Summer will return. There will be sunflowers again.

What is this evening for me? It’s crickets. Their sounds fill late summer nights. It is leaving the bedroom curtains open as the sky darkens. Sitting in my quiet room with no lamp lit, listening, watching the light leave. It’s letting the emotions of memories set butterflies to flutter in my belly and goosebumps to rise on my skin. Letting my mind wander and visions to appear. Suddenly I am a child again. Chasing fireflies. Air on so much of my skin, warm, the breeze soft. Swatting at the mosquito on my elbow, sweating, and not caring. Looking back at the house I grew up in, I see the porch light come on. Tilting my head back to glance at the sky, I get dizzy with the sensation of falling up instead of down. Then my mother’s voice calling me inside. I am young but I know it must end.

When did I realize, at what age, did I learn of endings? As a baby, did I notice that the cold of March — the month of my birth —began lifting? That the sun stayed longer, warming my face as my mother pushed me in a stroller? Then, the heat of summer. The slow creeping back of early sunsets. A chill in the air. My first winter. Was I two years old, three, or four when I knew things would come to an end?

When did Eve, that second of the first two human beings, realize that everything was changing? For the first time, one season flowed into another, and nothing was sure any longer. Already banished from the paradise of the Garden of Eden, she now witnessed the utter destruction of all that was familiar. Was she frightened? Or was she too busy to notice? Being mother to the entire human race certainly must have kept her busy.

So amusing how I, and others, even after years of watching our star come and go, shift in the sky, making us alter our clocks, still say, Wow, it’s getting dark so early now, as if it’s something new. As if we were children. As if it were the first time. As if we were sunflowers.

And so, it will happen again, just as it has every year, all the years of my life — the end. These edges of the seasons are my favorite time. The end slides into a beginning. For the time being.

Now I sit, at my desk, the open window in front of me. It is dark outside. The screen of my computer bright. The crickets singing their song of summer’s old age, the sound of it so familiar. The sound of longing. Realization and acceptance. It is the song of ending, reverberating through space and time. It is falling upwards and flying away.

Originally published in The Bluebird Word in February 2024.

Vicki Addesso is co-author of the collaborative memoir Still Here Thinking of You~A Second Chance With Our Mothers (Big Table Publishing, 2013). Publishing credits include: Gravel Magazine, Barren Magazine, The Writer, Sleet Magazine, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and more. She was nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize.

Farewell, in black and white

1 September 2024 / Editor

Nonfiction by Cheryl Sadowski

We rode the Central Park carousel all summer. By winter, the painted horses and gilded carriages stood still. To be part of B’s life in the suburbs is what mattered more than anything now. Arrangements were made, boxes packed, and on a dishwater day in January, the moving truck rolled down West 58th Street with my meager belongings.

I spent the last night in my empty apartment alone, lying on an air mattress staring at electric outlets. I listened for the familiar, persistent clang of the trash chute, the groan of pipes. Oddly, nothing. Only black silence and the dim glow of barren white walls. New York City seemed intent upon my leaving without a nod. Across the courtyard rows of windows darkened and blurred, and eventually I fell asleep.

Snow fell all night, thick and gauzy as cotton candy. I woke in the mauve morning light to find the windows frosted over. I threw on clothes and boots, grabbed my coat, and stomped through meringue drifts toward Central Park. Inside the park, sienna tree limbs bowed beneath white icing and black streetlamps tipped their tall, snow top hats. This was no cold, curt goodbye, but farewell on the most elegant and grandiose scale. The city had seen me after all, and she made sure I knew.

I spun around, eyes watering, and cleared off a park bench to sit down. Life with B. could wait an hour, or two.

Cheryl Sadowski writes about art, books, landscape, and nature. Her essays, reviews, and short fiction have been published in Oyster River Pages, The Ekphrastic Review, Vita Poetica, After the Art, and other publications. Cheryl holds a Master in Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Northern Virginia.

Notes We Cannot See

1 July 2024 / Editor

Poetry by Mary Baca Haque

today was flawed but not forever–
for when the morrow rises, the will
of first light reflects off leafy trees
halfway healing the disarray, ceasing

yesterday’s melancholy, sailing
on silver seeds of the aged lion’s tooth
dissipating in the new air

to the tune of the devoted cardinal
at first light playing advantageously
in backgrounds

carrying on winds
in notes we cannot see, but feel
the chorus in the promise of a new day

with new breath
under yellow shades with azureous skies.

Mary Baca Haque prefers to capture the essence of the natural world, hence her forthcoming publication, Painting the Sky with Love (2024-Macmillan). Her poetry can be found in Wild Roof Journal, Cosmic Daffodils, Amethyst Review, Closed Eye Open, and Seraphic Review (2023 and forthcoming in 2024). She resides in Chicago, Illinois.