HOPE

I think l may have writer's block - perhaps l've been away too long.

HOPE

If only l could say

a new thing, a thing

l've never said before.

Something small as a spoon

or big as a landscape:

as new as a baby.

Hope appears before me, flourishing

as a rosebush.

I pick one of its flowers.

And l look for what resembles

that spoon, that landscape,

that baby.

Nothing there. But the air

smells like a wild rose.

How pleasant its scent.

Norman MacCaig Dec 1988