Faith is the “perhaps” that things will work out

for us in the long run, a chance we take,

our bet on magnanimity. We stake

our lives, priorities we think about

on such, with a scarcity of reasons.

Certainty is suspended ’til the last

breath of eternity, its final gasp -

no more time remains for doubt, no season.

Until then, belief blooms in the strange

hot-house of novel, tangled flowers

unforeseen in time’s ten billion hours,

much too much for humans to arrange.

No proof exists for such an optimism

but a canny guess, a hint, an intuition