Hope & Fear

In the year twenty-ought-eight, co-joined twins were born from our collective womb of love and hate. Some hoped for love, fearing hate. Others hated love and feared hope.

The labour was unending, nearly unbearably painful, and unexpectedly inescapable:

Nor crown, nor breech births were feasible. So, the entire planet linked in to witness the birth by poll-directed C-section on YouTube.

Twins were born:

• Skulls fused,
• Blue veins and red arteries interconnected,
• Sharing a single brain.

The parents (who quarreled over everything) quarreled over naming: Hopeless and Fearful? Fearless and Hopeful? In the end the babies were named Hope and Fear.

Having two mouths and two stomachs, the babies demanded a lot of feeding. And the twins’ four-cheeked derrière demanded double diapering. But, they were well-fed and grew at an alarming rate. Before long, their vast maws began to gobble up every scrap and smidgen of our attention. And the thundering reports from their eruptive blast holes shattered every window pane on Earth.

Hope’s first word was Yes!, but Fear disagreed and tried in vein to shake his co-joined head. Then stamping his foot in fury, shouted No! (Sharing one brain, however, it is difficult to disentangle who actually said what. Perhaps Fear spoke No! through Hope’s mouth, but it garbled out as Yes!. Maybe Hope willed Fear to utter No! as an act of one-upsmanship. Or, possibly, Yes! is No! in the language of Fear.

* * *

As we enter twenty-ought nine, Hope and Fear grace the glossy covers of every magazine in the check-out line. Hope has been elected President, while Fear has been appointed to Greed’s long-established post as chairman of the economy.

Being co-joined, it’s difficult for the twins to stay out of each other’s business. Hope has been dabbling in the stock market. Fear has been lobbying for a large military contractor.

But the people can’t get enough of this dynamic duo, so out they are trotted by every network, to mouth the words of every headline news story.

* * *

The words of Hope, the songs of Fear,
Be they loud, be they clear,
Whether whispered in the dark,
Or carved from stone in every park,
Mumbled on a beggar’s breath,
Eulogized at your mother’s death,
Engraved within your wedding ring,
Emblazoned on a bomber’s wing:
These two will never be unbound—
Hope without Fear cannot be found.
And both derive their strength, you see,
From thinking thoughts of what might be.

The blindness of a fearful heart
Uncloaks itself when we start
To focus on what’s here and now.
And hopefulness will take a bow,
When, like an infant girl or boy,
We fill our hearts with boundless Joy.