"Broken Leaf" photo by Patricia Hope
JOY TRAIN
It can trundle down your street like a ghost train,
noiseless, effortless, unknown until you hear
that song you love, see a mockingbird perched
on the holly bush, glimpse a November sunset,
or watch a neighbor’s eyes light up because
you were kind. It can drift from the sky in a December
snowfall to land on your upturned face.
You can hear it in the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th
Symphony: dah, dah, dah, Dum. dah, dah, dah, Dum.
It can come softly, quietly like a golden maple leaf
floating to the ground or that earliest warm day
in the year when you know spring has arrived.
It’s that unexpected moment that slips in on a child’s
hug, a lover’s kiss, a friend’s voice. You can sometimes
find it in an old family photo when a memory rolls
in front of you just like it was yesterday. You can’t buy it
or sell it. But you can be open to it.
It can chug in on a gloomy day and help you understand
that the next day, the next hour, the next minute
are all worth getting on board for because who knows what joys
are yet to be found.
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"First Daffodils" photo by Patricia Hope
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"Squirrel with Pear" photo by Patricia Hope
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Patricia Hope’s award-winning writing has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Guideposts’ Blessings in Disguise, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Southern Writers, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Agape Review, Pigeon Parade Quarterly, The Mildred Haun Review, Blue Ridge Country, The Gargoylicon, Upper Room, Home Life, The Tennessee Conservationist, and many newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. She has edited two poetry anthologies and published two novels, including Lonely Way Back Home (2017). Her photos have appeared in Living Lutheran, The Avocet, The Notebook, Mature Living, Southern Writers, Liquid Imagination, The Tennessee Conservationist and numerous other publications. Patricia lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
March 2024 issue
Uplifting poem! And I like the photographs.