Ada Limón - Apr 10, Fun with Chairs

Some days I’ll read a piece at the end of class and afterwards get an email from a student with another piece in response. This is from Patricia Wallace, who thought I’d like more instructions/advice after hearing Coco Chanel last week. Pat’s right, I do like Instructions…And this suits this moment, spring, pandemic, etc.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

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.