Hope is a Thing with Feathers

7/31/25

“Hope is a Thing with Feathers.” I have never been a poet, nor do I claim to be a poetry aficionado, but even I know that this is one of Emily Dickinson’s most famous poems. The line suddenly pushed its way into my mind as I was driving away from the Healing Place after tutoring Roy and Jason on Tuesday.

“Where did that come from?” I asked out loud as I navigated bumpy, rutted Stockton Street heading away from the CARITAS center. “Who knows?” I thought and chuckled to myself. Jason and Roy had really brightened my day when they began to tease each other in class. They read the second half of the AA pamphlet on acceptance out loud, with gentle promptings from me to sound out the challenging words, and I then gave them time to define the tricky vocabulary words using dictionaries while I prepared their snack. It has been gratifying to see these men gain confidence in their reading journey and word attack strategies. Neither of them reads above a 5^th grade level, but both men are tenacious and very motivated. They are tired of people making fun of them for not knowing words in the Big Book or the Twelve and Twelve. They also realize that reading better will help their recovery and could lead to better jobs and volunteer opportunities.

I returned with their snack and asked Roy to tell me about the first word “arrogant.” He replied, “Someone who is haughty, acts like a know it all, in other words, Jason.” I cracked up! Jason laughed too, and said “oh, I see how it is!” We then had a 5-minute digression talking about arrogance vs. humility and I confessed that I had been called arrogant in the past and that I also had to work on humility. Eventually, we got back to the word list again and I called on Jason to define “vicious.” He said, “there was a picture of Roy in my dictionary for that one,” before giving me the definitions he wrote down. We all laughed, teased each other good naturedly and then I directed them back to our reading lesson.

Hope is what has been missing in my life for the past 2 years since Alex died. Roy and Jason gave me some back this week. At home, I looked up the full poem and read interpretations of its meaning. I distilled what I read down to the following ideas. Hope is like a small bird living within our human soul. It is always present, singing its song even in the face of adversity and never asks for anything in return. Perhaps I couldn’t hear the bird until Roy and Jason brought it to my attention? Now I will be seeking it out each day and hope that I will be able to hear its song and pick on its joy.