optimism is not my strongest suit

There are heard melodies and h-e-r-d melodies.
My teachers never taught us poetry;
instead they gave us poems to memorize.
The most difficult rhetorical form for me
is the commencement address, especially
since optimism is not my strongest suit.
Hope's not optimism--"All will be all right"--
but takes root and blossoms when history
advances from atrocious to merely messy;
hope says, "There's work to be done, stick to it."
My own history in northern Ireland was fraught
with high voltage under decorousness. What
better definition of poetry could you have?
I'm still learning to read the poems I love.

[Philip Dacey {1939-2016} 'Seamus Heaney: Cento Sonnet' from The Ice-Cream Vigils: Last Poems]