The life that takes but keeps on giving

Dead Stars

by Ada Limón

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
                 Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
       the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
       recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
       Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
       of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
       what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
       We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

Instructions on Not Giving Up

By 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.

The feeling when you come across a good poem (like a GOOD one) and then you want to become an avid poetry reader.😭Anyways, I like to categorize poems into three categories

•  the GOOD poems (like really good)

• the not so good poems (maybe just not my vibe)

• the poems I just cannot comprehend

And let me tell you, my mentor poet Ada Limón’s poems are definitely the good kind in my books. I like reading poems about life, many poems are about life, but mainly the ones about life lessons. Poetry is great at allowing the reader to reflect by interpreting the poem and relating to it; it makes me more open-minded to other perspectives on life. Instead of having a solid opinion like “life is like [blank] and will always be like [blank],” poetry gifts me the ability to explore other people’s experiences and see what they’ve learned from it. Although a lot of experiences in life are shared, many are also universal and we have a lot to learn from one another.

The first poem of Limón’s above is titled “Dead Stars”. What attracted me to this poem is how I had to dig through the beautiful diction and frills of the poem to uncover its meaning, one which I think is very valuable but also new to me. She describes how we humans are detached from nature and its purpose, while also relating us to the world itself when she states “but mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too”; she speaks on how we should treat nature like we are cohesive with it, because we are, and find empathy to respect and protect the beautiful environment we are lucky to flourish in. I found this message really prominent in the phrases “What if we…Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?”, “What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain/for the safety of others, for earth”. She also mentions how just being human, living life, and surviving is worthy of praise and that “we are not unspectacular things/We’ve come this far, survived this much” so why not go past what we have been given and make an effort to love, understand, and create change.

The second poem of hers that I have included titled “Instructions on Not Giving Up” describes the resilience we humans have and should maintain in tough situations through a description of spring. She illustrates how a tree always does its job, they always grow and continue to produce greener leaves despite the pass in seasons, dull colors, and another cycle of dead leaves. Although life feels never ending sometimes, Lima’s poem helps me understand that there is always more while we are living. She is helping me come to terms with, in her own words “a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty". Although I think Ada Limón’s poem encompasses various learning experiences well, poems don’t always have to be a life lesson. They can simply just be beautiful words.

No so poetic poetry of mine:

I wish I could stand on a cloud without sinking through

The soles of my feet solid on the fluff

Content with the idea of not breaking through

A call from beneath,

“Pull me up, can I join?”

Yes.

Let’s be untroubled together