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Thomas DeFreitas was born in Boston. The first three words he ever spoke were ravioli, Woolworth’s, and McGovern. Thomas was educated at the Boston Latin School and at the University of Massachusetts. For the last decade and a half, he has lived in Arlington, MA, where he guzzles black coffee in the dead of night, venerates Hart Crane’s ghost, strikes up conversations with the spectre of Raymond Carver, and strives each day to do The Next Right Thing. His fourth collection of poems, Walking Between the Raindrops, was published by Kelsay Books in March 2025.

Hope

Thomas DeFreitas

for Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

For me, at least, hope
is the painstaking change
from August to November,
from trash-bag leaves to conflagration
astonishing my aging eyes
every single autumn. Then, blaze
greying out to ashes and witherings,
all swept away by the bristly candour,
the bracing freshness of winter.

Hope doesn’t leap over hurdles,
isn’t a cheetah in the savannah,
but crawls along, stubborn old tortoise,
knowing that the task at hand,
the living of life,
demands not perfection
but progress, however small.
Nail being hammered forward
an eighth, a sixteenth of an inch.

No, hope is not the sparrow,
no fleet and tiny flier.
She’s no gymnast,
no Dawes at Barcelona;
rather, a cautious agent
of revolution.
A subtle and arduous grace.
A cliff of ice, a glacial wall,
a barricade of hypothermia
beginning to trickle and liquefy
in the brave March sun.

If I look around,
if I’m alert, there are harbingers.
Sparks like stars
in the interminable firmament,
in the vast and drastic sky.

— Thomas DeFreitas

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