I make a special effort to be on Front and Union Streets as often as possible when the trees are blossoming. They wont last long, those branches of airy snowballs. This week full bloom, next week withering, and then the leaves start up. Im surprised with what Ada Limn does with that. I expected her, as people usually do, to go on about the beauties of spring blossoms.

But she leads us from the beginning with more than, and more than. Even the words almost obscene display, shoving, and baubles and trinkets prejudice us in favor of what must come next. She has the blossoming feel garish compared to the greening.

In the aftermath of all that display, here come the trees, patient and plodding. How can I help but think of the condition of the world right now? How can my mind not turn to politics, war, chaos? Maybe thats why I landed on this poem. Because it reminds me, as a walk in the woods reminds me, of the ongoingness of things. I dont read this poem as an invitation to do nothing but watch trees leaf out, but more as a reminder that life is continuous, in spite of the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. The leaf unfolds the way a fist can turn into an open palm and take it all.

Im struck by the tree saying, Fine, then. I read that as Okay, I get it, thats the way its going to be. Not particularly joyful about it, but not sad either. Life is a turmoil, and it is necessary to open to whatever is the case.

Not that greening is any more virtuous than blossoming. You might think of it like courtship, all full of excitement and flowers. Then comes the commitment to making something ongoing together. If you were thinking in terms of politics, you might think of doing the steady, hard work of governing, after the fanfare of elections. Of not giving up, as the title says.

I notice that she says the strange idea of continuous living. Whats strange about it? Maybe its that our natural inclination is to think in narrow terms, short bursts of enthusiasm. I guess it may be stranger to imagine the steadiness, the cyclical nature of things.

Ada Limn is the author of Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015). She teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte and at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Fleda Brown of Traverse City is professor emerita, University of Delaware, and past poet laureate of Delaware. For more of her work, and to see her website, go to http://www.fledabrown.com.

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On Poetry: Meditation on the ongoingness of things - Traverse City Record Eagle