“Instructions on Not Giving Up" by Ada Limón

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 15, 2017   Instructions on Not Giving Up   Ada Limón

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.            Copyright © 2017 Ada Limón. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "It was a hard winter. My whole body raged against it. But right as the world feels uninhabitable, something miraculous happens: the trees come back. I wanted to praise that ordinary thing as a way of bringing myself back too." —Ada Limón   Ada Limón is the author of Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015). She teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte and at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.   Photo credit: Jude Domsky Poetry by Limón   Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015) "SONNET (silenced)" by Olena Kalytiak Davis "I shall forget you presently, my dear (Sonnet IV)" by Edna St. Vincent Millay "Half-Hearted Sonnet" by Kim Addonizio Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038