hummingbird

Sometimes I forget how fleeting self-esteem can be. Hope is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson said. I venture to guess that she meant something more specific--our hope in ourselves. It's lighter than the flutterings of a hummingbird, and just as escapable. Bat your eyelash for a second, and it could be gone. Keep on walking, and it could come back, waver in midair, all its powers of temptation right before you.

I suppose the only thing any of us could do (or perhaps the only thing I could do) is to keep on walking.

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