Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limon

Instructions on Not Giving Up 

by Ada Limon

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.

This week, pretty late because of our cold spring, is the week of blossom confetti and "almost obscene display." I feel connected to Limon's sense that BOTH the "funnels" and the "greening" get to her. And I love that the greening inspires her with it's "strange idea of continuous living despite..." I love the conceit of being inspired by nature. It's a poetic version of post-card sentiments like "10 ways to learn from trees." Limon's poem "Notes on the Below" is also about being inspired by a natural object; but in that poem it's not the 'continuous living" but "to be quiet, and yet still breathing" and "to speak to the core/that creates and swallows, to speak not always to what's/shouting, but to what's underneath asking for nothing."