For several Sundays in a row, I’ve pulled this poem from its folder, itchy to put in the box. Bold and colorful and greedy with life, it’s everything spring offers. Little more than a month ago, yards across Austin were devastated by the worst winter storm in many decades. It seemed impossible that the plants would sprout again. But so much has seemed impossible in these months of pandemic and strife. Limón’s poem doesn’t deny “the mess of us, the hurt, the empty,” but it doesn’t deny the reasons to celebrate amid it all either—beginning with new leaves.
“...it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me”
