It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. This poem was inspired by the winds blowing fiercely and the freezing rain pelting me as I took the recycling bin out one evening. Once I read through it, it seemed almost as if Ada Limón had been standing across the street watching me. I wish that was the case as I think she would be a fascinating person to talk with, but until that happens, we've got her poetry.
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?
====
From The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) by Ada Limón. Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón.
You can read more about Ada Limón here.
====
Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!
I love this poem! (and YES... I need to learn more constellations...except, Orion is just so smart standing up there in the skies at night!) Thank you so much for sharing Ada... would that we were all in the same neighborhood with Ada across the street from you!
ReplyDeleteOh! Can you imagine meeting up with Ada as you take the trash out? Great poem Bonny - thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThe city just gave us rolling containers for the first time and the noise they make going up our long driveways is ridiculous. I'm not a fan but now that I have to walk them up instead of just throwing the cans in the back of the truck, I do get a better view from the top of the hill of the winter sky that is quite spectacular here.
ReplyDeleteWe have trash collection every Thursday, but recycling every other Friday, so sometimes the rumbling of my neighbors' bins being taken to the curb serves as a reminder to me that it's recycling and I've forgotten!
DeleteWhat a GREAT poem! I love the whole, thoughtful . . . profoundness . . . of it. And framed by recycling bins. Perfection! And my favorite line (that I just wrote in my journal for good measure) . . . "I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying." Oh, that is so, so good.
ReplyDeleteI very much needed this today. And only a poet could go from rolling out the trash bins to reflecting on how we are made of stardust!
ReplyDeleteThere is a poem for EVERYthing ... and I love the "What would happen" idea, especially in the midst of the ordinary, and the not so ordinary. Big thoughts mixed in with taking out the trash is what life is all about.
ReplyDelete