The hues of hope

You spend your childhood learning how to be brave.
You spend your adulthood learning how to fear.
Beware. In fearlessness alone is there the power
to continue, strength to remain. Defiant of all that
threatens, conviction forswearing hope, fear’s
prevarication scorned; surrender, not submission.
Suffering in hopefulness thus transfigured, faith
taking up the fight. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
Surely, we must yield to all all that is ours by destiny
to bear. How precarious is life; how violent, mere hope.
In the mortal world in which we live, from where
the power to continue in more days, more semblances.
Can perpetuity be parried with the instruments of time,
taunted with prematurities, a future ever future?
Forever is but  a sentiment of fondness, wishful thinking,
immortality contrived. Forever, here, at best uncertain,
at worst, denied, despite and still, the only chance of hope,
is hope believed, not hoped – surpassing wish, desire,
longing, craving, anticipation, whim – becoming faith.
Belief through faith enlivened, purged of trepidation,
reality assured. When belief is actuality, faith becomes
endeavour, hope becomes strategy. Perhaps if but for
hope the heart would break; but were it not for faith,
belief, unfailing, the heart would surely find no healing.
Lost in the waters, your light is my shore. Hope’s harshest
blows eluded; assurance prevailing, delusion no more.