Sighs of Hope

Russell E. Willis

Tempted to despair, 

a better angel

sighs into our souls

some gentle signs of

peace and joy and some

other’s love for us

Now is the time for

us to sigh or shout

a call for other

better angels to

slip from the darkness

and be seen to love

Russell Willis won the Sapphire Prize in Poetry in the 2022 Jewels in the Queen’s Crown Contest (Sweetycat Press) and has published poetry in thirty online and print journals and twenty print anthologies. Russell grew up in and around Texas and was vocationally scattered as an engineer, ethicist, college/university teacher and administrator, and Internet education entrepreneur throughout the Southwest and Great Plains, finally settling in Vermont with his wife, Dawn. He emerged as a poet in 2019 with the publication of three poems in The Write Launch.  Russell’s website is https://REWillisWrites.com