THE GREENING OF THE TREES

Ada Limón, “Adaptation”
It was, for a time, a loud twittering flight
of psychedelic-colored canaries: a cloud
of startle and get-out in the ornamental
irons of the rib cage. Nights when the moon
was wide like the great eye of a universal
beast coming close for a kill, it was a cave
of bitten bones and snake skins, eggshell dust,
and charred scraps of a frozen-over flame.
All the things it has been: kitchen knife
and the ancient carp’s frown, cavern of rust
and worms in the airless tire swing,
cactus barb, cut-down tree, dead cat
in the plastic crate. Still, how the great middle
ticker marched on, and from all its four chambers
to all its forgiveness, unlocked the sternum’s
door, reversed and reshaped until it was a new
bright carnal species, more accustomed to grief,
and ecstatic at the sight of you.
Ada Limón, “Adaptation” from Bright Dead Things. Copyright © 2015 by Ada Limón. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company LLC on behalf of Milkweed Editions, Milkweed.org.
 
 
Ada Limón, “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.
Ada Limón, “Instructions on Not Giving Up” from The Carrying. Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company LLC on behalf of Milkweed Editions, Milkweed.org.
  
POETIC THEMES
            What joy to hang out with Ada Limón’s lifesaving words for a bit. Both these poems are about maturity, about how our banged-up winter bodies and love-battered hearts could dream to still hope, hope to still dream. I suppose I should say at the outset that my experience of seasonal depression, and clinical depression in general, will always color my need for and way of reading both poetry and the shifting seasons. It’s as much a part of my subject position as anything else. But I promise next week I’ll cheer up—or try to. For now though, I’d like to confess that both these poems speak to the part of me that wants to die every day between four and five in the afternoon. Both poems also speak to what gets me through it: every day the feeling passes. The Buddhist teaching of impermanence has special use value for depressives, which could be chalked up to… like… survival.
            The human heart in every life has on taken so, so many different shapes. “Adaptation” gives a litany of heart incarnations, weird and wonderful and dark. Shape-shifting from startled canary to carnivorous moon-eye to kitchen knife to the “ancient carp’s frown.” Each is more evocative than the next. For me, the most compelling metaphors find a way to describe the heart darkly, in some kind of cage, like the dead cat in the crate, or the worms and rust inside the tire swing. Oh, the ways and ways our heart can incarnate darkness.
            And then, right in the middle of a line, comes the cutting word “still”! What comes next is the sweetest of promises, the certainty that the “great middle ticker” will reemerge yet again, in new form, “from all its four chambers / to all its forgiveness.” We know the relief in experiencing inner movement after emotional stuckness, like rain after a long drought. We are reassured of our heart’s capacity for tenaciously marching forward. We are lifted, palpably, out of our pain when the door of the breastbone is unlocked and the heart escapes to feel again, stronger in its grief-resilience.
            Finally, magically, the very last word reveals this to be a love poem. Entering the scene, refreshing everything: you! We have no idea to whom—or to what—this poem is written. But the heart appears, “reversed and reshaped until it was a new / bright carnal species” (perhaps the source of the title of the collection, Bright Dead Things). What or whom is being witnessed to inspire this change? Perhaps “you” is a private matter, or maybe it’s us, the reader! Or maybe “you” is the world perceived again as new, the way it is when rebirthed in spring. In any case, when renewed, the heart can once again escape the cage of the self and behold the other. This is ecstasy in its true sense (from the Greek ekstasis, standing outside oneself).
            “Instructions on Not Giving Up” strikes me as the twin poem to “Adaptation,” both about the capacity for renewal that allows us to remain open. Limón redefines strength: true grit is a kind of flexibility of feeling, a tenacious emotional openness to otherness within and without. Forget the showy fabulousness of cotton candy confetti cherry blossoms—that’s not really what spring rebirth is about. It’s about something deeper, more authentic, slower, less obvious: the ability for something huge and strong and old to sprout something new and humble and alive—something green. This perspective shift celebrates, again, the body that has been through it, the hurt and empty mess returning “to the strange idea of continuous living.” Acknowledging “the mess of us, the hurt, the empty” is step one to actually not giving up; step two is reminding us of our capacity for growing new skin. Skin, the biggest and the least acknowledged organ in the body. The boundary between what is and is not us. Skin, at once our defensive barrier and our porous, sensate mode of making contact with the outside world. In touching our potential for renewal, for continuance, we might open back up to the world, like a fist to an open palm, and move forward toward life.
 

PRACTICE
               If you’re called to move, it might be lovely to develop a movement sequence from big, showy shapes toward a deeper, slower, more subtle, contemplative mode. You could experience the contrast of splayed-open movements and poses by taking up as much space as possible, with extravagant flourishes that mimic Limón’s fist unfurling to open palm through flamenco-style wrist circles that reach out and up. Movement choices that make use of action words like “shoving,” “breaking out,” “shock,” and “strewn” might dial down to something slower and subtler, like stroking the fingertips of one hand along the heart meridian, from the end of one limb to the end of the other. For example, right fingertips explore the skin by gliding from left fingertips, up the arm, across the heart center, to unfurl to the right, then the left fingers take a turn.
                 It might make sense to finish just by attending to the heart’s beat. As you lay your fingertips on the wrist, carotid artery, or the great middle ticker itself, you might call to mind a few heart metaphors from your own past, to acknowledge the banged-up mess but also to re-source your allies. The metaphors don't have to be anything fancy, just meaningful objects or people: ballerina-doll heart, dodgeball heart, jungle-gym-trickster heart. What might be the next carnal species calling to your ticker this spring? We need to open ourselves to all the heart-shapes that might rebirth our ability to love.