poetry pocket: it's the season i often mistake

and today, just when i could not stand myself any longer, a group of field sparrows, which were actually field sparrows, flew up into the bare branches of the hackberry.

“what good is accuracy amidst the perpetual scattering that unspools the world?”
- Ada Limón

in conversation with Ezra Klein, Limòn remarks:

“Here’s something I believe — in a way, it’s a quiet thesis of the show. In dark times, when so much in the news is so unrelentingly horrible, it is a political act — it is a political act to open yourself to the awe and joy and beauty the world still provides. To sit with a poem or take a walk in the woods isn’t an abdication or a kind of quietism. It’s a reminder of what this is all for. It’s an opportunity to muster the strength to continue, and to see just a little bit more clearly, and maybe respond just a little more compassionately.”

little voice, you can read another brilliant prose poem of Limón’s below:

“When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years, my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work, osteopathy. And soon, my crooked spine unspooled a bit. I could breathe again and move more in a body unclouded by pain. My mom would tell me to sing songs to her the whole 45-minute drive to Middle Two Rock Road and 45 minutes back from physical therapy. She’d say that even my voice sounded unfettered by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang because I thought she liked it. I never asked her what she gave up to drive me or how her day was before this chore. Today, at her age, I was driving myself home from yet another spine appointment singing along to some maudlin but solid song on the radio. And I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My God, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.”
- The Raincoat, Ada Limón.

you can listen to Limón’s electric conversation with Krista Tippett on the wonderful On Being podcast here.

you can read the superb interview with herself and Ezra Klein here.

Concert of Birds, Frans Snyders (1601).