“Hope is a waking dream.”
                                                                      Aristotle

I feel a glimpse of hope, a tiny one,
so small you might confuse it with a speck
of dust that landed in your eye, a sun-
beam relic, seen and soon forgotten. Heck,
it seems to vanish into air, this hope
that dances ‘fore my eyes, this cheerful ghost
whose laughter sounds like tinkling bells, a rope
that loops around my chest and squeezes most
of what I fear away, then loosens as I fill
my lungs with sweet, sweet air, and think how could
I ever let my thoughts become so shrill.
A bit of hope, that holds up all that’s good
for weary eyes, like mine, to spy between
the waning sun and nighttime’s first moonbeam.

All things are connected. That’s the premise of what William J. Joel does. Each of Mr. Joel’s interests informs each other. Mr. Joel has been teaching computer science since 1983 and has been a writer even longer. His works have recently appeared in Common Ground Review, DASH Literary Journal, The Blend International, Liminality, and North Dakota Quarterly.