I am not sure when I first wrote the poem below, “A Beam of Hope.” I think I wrote it in the latter half of high school. It wasn’t before then, and it wasn’t after my sophomore year of college. I place it between 2008 and 2012, years when I was still deciding where to take my life for sure, and, like all young adult men, I was, of course, full of angst, though I was the kind of kid to internalize most of that when I wasn’t trying to write about it. Anyway, this poem feels appropriate for times like these, with the world seemingly burning all around us. We only have to look out our windows to see the flames flickering out there in the darkness.

“A Beam of Hope”
By Ethan McGuire

Through death and destruction,
through booming and night,
through human ignorance
and the trend to fight,
through all of our struggles
and the human plight,
comes an unwavering,
bright-shining light.
Sure-shining.
A beam of hope.