In Verses & Song

Photo taken at our visit to Dixon Gallery & Gardens in Memphis, TN, March 18, 2023 Essay on Spring The softness of the day settles over us, sun shaping spring in sibilant sounds newness awash in the wind. I listen to Ada Limón recite her poetry and talk about our humanness, of how the trees and the wind and the suburban thunder arise to make us part of something bigger, something shocking and normal and wise and crazy and beautiful. I walk the circular sidewalk and begin to write in my head as she speaks, begin to take all the hope and wonder and curiosity of the city around me and winnow it into something else, something that might make sense to the wider world. I watch the way a white plastic bag hangs in the branches, carried by the same wind that caresses my cheeks, carried by the same warmth that brings buds to ripen and birds to sing. How is it we can live in a place so sanctified yet so discarded, a space that spills life while we continue to leave refuse behind us? Ada s