Spring Awakening: "Instructions on Not Giving Up," by Ada Limón

Spring has sprung, and as we emerge from our winter slumbers, let's take a breather and luxuriate in some beautiful poetry, in honor of April being National Poetry Month.

Because I'm currently reading Ada Limón, here's a seasonally appropriate poem from The Carrying.

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s

almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving

their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate

sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees

that really gets to me. When all the shock of white

and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

— Ada Limón, "Instructions on Not Giving Up"

"A return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us"—as beautiful and perfect a summation of the dawning of Spring as you'll ever read. "Instructions on Not Giving Up" is the poem I needed right now, and it'll be serving as my inspiration this Spring.

What's inspiring you this season?

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