It’s the Season I Often Mistake
by Ada Limón
Birds for leaves, and leaves for birds.
The tawny yellow mulberry leaves
are always goldfinches tumbling
across the lawn like extreme elation.
The last of the maroon crabapple
ovates are song sparrows that tremble
all at once. And today, just when I
could not stand myself any longer,
a group of field sparrows, that were
actually field sparrows, flew up into
the bare branches of the hackberry
and I almost collapsed: leaves
reattaching themselves to the tree
like a strong spell for reversal. What
else did I expect? What good
is accuracy amidst the perpetual
scattering that unspools the world.
From The Hurting Kind. Milkweed Editions,
Forthcoming in May, 2022. Reprinted with permission.
Read this and other poems by Ada Limón in The Hurting Kind, available for purchase online.
Looking out at a bleak and seemingly bare winter landscape, I’d just had the same thought a few days before I read Ada Limón’s poem—that it’s hard to tell the difference between the few birds left, and the leaves tumbling over the frozen ground. In spite of the confession at its center, this poem nonetheless unfolds multiple delights—as the speaker finds pleasure in the naming of birds, leaves, and trees as well as in the miracle she witnesses “just when I/could not stand myself any longer.” Many of us have felt the sudden uplift of a whole flock of birds rising at once when we step too close, watching as they reassemble in the branches of a tree, yet Limón sees even more deeply into this moment. Not only does she find relief and joy in the field sparrows themselves, but also in the way they make the tree look leafed-out again, made whole by their presence. The “strong spell for reversal” they enact refers both to the “unspooling” of the season as well as the shift in the speaker’s own mood. As her more philosophical final lines point out, “accuracy” is rather useless in the face of the world’s constant changes and “scattering.” It doesn’t matter that the sparrows were not actually hackberry leaves, for instance, only that she saw them as leaves for that instant. Perhaps she also implies that, as Rilke once famously put it, “No feeling is final,” no matter how accurately we believe we can name it. In the flit of a moment, even the most insistent self-loathing can turn into wonder and awe, all sense of self suddenly gone.
Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Can you think back to a time when you felt your own sense of self dissolve in the face of delight and awe for the natural world? Where were you, and what specifically did you observe that seemed so miraculous?
ABOUT THE POET: Ada Limón
Ada Limón is the author of numerous poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her newest book, The Hurting Kind, is forthcoming in May, 2022 from Milkweed Editions. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry, she serves as host for the podcast, The Slowdown, and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS
James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.
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