TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

One of the things I love about celebrating someone’s birthday is the magical moment when they’re asked to make a wish. There’s probably a lit candle in a piece of cake or pie, a brownie … maybe even a donut. And after everyone sings “Happy Birthday,” the person stops to silently consider what they want most — what’s most on their mind or in their heart — before taking a deep breath and blowing out the candle. They know better than to ruin a wish by saying it out loud. 

I’m especially enchanted by this moment when the wishmaker is one of my own children. My kids and I have a tradition where they get to choose the meal and the dessert I make on their birthdays. I invite our family over for dinner, and we all sit down and have that chosen meal together, all thirteen of us. I watch their faces closely during that magical moment, when they  take that deep breath before blowing out the candle I’ve lit. If hope is an emotion you can see on a person’s face, surely it’s visible before a child makes a wish.

But wishes aren’t only reserved for birthdays. I make a wish anytime I look at the clock and it reads 11:11. I make a wish when I see a shooting star, or when I find a shell on the beach and throw it back into the waves — my version of tossing a coin into a fountain. I’ve been known to make wishes when I see anything in nature that moves me: a rainbow, a low orange moon, a hawk on a lightpost or tree branch. Because why not? It can’t hurt! When it comes to wishing, I think more is more.  

Today’s poem is about wishing, and in that way, I think it’s about hope. Even when a wish is farfetched and seems less than likely, hope is what allows us to make it anyway.

Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise
by Jay Hopler

Now that the sun has set and the rain has abated,
And every porch light

          in the neighborhood is lit,
Maybe we can invent something; I'd like a new

Way of experiencing the world, a way of taking
Into myself the single light shining at the center

Of all things without losing the dense, eccentric
Planets orbiting around it.

          What you'd like is a more
Attentive lover, I suppose—· Too bad that slow,

Wet scorch of orange blossoms floating towards
The storm drain is not a vein of stars . . . we could

Make a wish on one of them; not that we would
Wish for anything but the impossible.

“Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise” by Jay Hopler from GREEN SQUALL © 2006 Jay Hopler. Used by permission of Yale University Press.