What Perches, What Stays

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

A perch is temporary. The bird lands, rests, then leaves. We think of hope as permanent, but Dickinson knew better. It arrives, settles lightly on a branch inside us, and makes no promises. Some mornings it is there. Some mornings we notice its absence. The gift is not that it stays forever. The gift is that it comes at all, and that we are the kind of creatures capable of feeling its small weight.