Each day, more light

Cultivating hope through words

Leap day, and with it, the pressure to do something with the extra time, to use this illusion of the calendar for something incredible. I prefer to think of it as a day for pause: an unusual moment to appreciate the usual – the things that are happening, gradually, in their own time, underground, to bring us spring. 

These are the thoughts I poured into the poem I'm sharing with you this week, which I wrote a version of immediately following the 2019 UK general election. The poem is set on leap day 2020 and imagines the transition from hibernation to hope after a bleak winter. Basically, I wrote it to cheer myself up! And that was before the pandemic.

This leap year, it might seem harder than ever to find what Rebecca Solnit terms the ‘hope in the dark’, to see the small signs of possibility and peace when huge horrors persist all around – the genocide against Palestinian civilians, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, antisemitism and Islamophobia – both of which are on the rise, and political corruption, poverty, gender inequality, and the ever-increasing threat to the planet through climate change. In the UK, the actions of emailing our MPs, making donations, protesting online and on marches, having difficult conversations with each other and making changes in our own lives feel simultaneously all that can be done and not enough. They are actions that can be made from a place of anger and despair, but to continue time and again with these acts of change requires hope.

We can all cultivate hope. For writers, it’s made through our words.

I saved this Instagram post (screenshot below) from Nikita Gill because it was my permission slip to share joy and hope even when it feels I have no right to. I also keep Solnit's words in mind:

‘Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.’

So here is my poem of love for the earth, of learning from the flowers. Of hope. And a little kindness to February too – who I was imagining was depleted of love for itself after giving away all those Valentine’s cards and then having to do an extra day’s work.

Each day, more light

Six fifty: kitchen whispering
a sunrise with tea and toast
and hope. Looking out, planning what to grow.

After late-autumn mulching, the prospect now
of perfect loam:
giving all roots a place
to trust, explore, make home.

An extra day of winter
to clear
with spring-tine rake;
an extra day together,
to wait.

After last frost: to work,
no shortcut, no leap 
to that greenest green
only regular care rewarded 
in time
with
a brightening of the ground outside:
each day, more light
on sharp new grass
as March meets us here
and
fills up February’s heart.