What Hope Is

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

I’ll tell you
 what hope is.
 It’s not going
 to the grocery store
 and getting yelled at 
 for bringing your
 screaming son along
 and then next week
 doing it again.
  
 It is breaking through
 the thick cloak that surrounds him
 and finding a small increment
 of communication,
 reaching down into
 the cylinder of autism
 and pulling out
 shafts of light.