Its poetry month, y’all.

And, inspired by Cynthia Lee, I’m sharing a good one with you. This poet is younger than I am, and there is part of me that is shocked by that. Age!! she yells and shakes her fist at that slate sky!!

(if you click on the website, you can hear Ada Limon read it herself, which is always nice.)

Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón – Poems | poets.org

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.

****

now, me. not poetic today. well, i mean, i am. i always am. but i don’t want anyone holding me to it, no feet to the fire, not today. I am proud to have produced another holiday for the kids, strange as they are, happy to not cancel, happy to not have throw up laundry still to do, happy to have been surrounded by candy, family and a beautiful sunny day. As the green of the tree says, in resignation and pride, ‘I’ll take it all’.

I’m doing better than surviving, loves.

love and bursting love,

kate