Marisa Guerin, PhD - January 16, 2018
When I feel discouraged by the state of affairs in the country, the world, sometimes I look to poets for perspective.
This poem by Jane Hirshfeld speaks to my hope that behind and beneath injustice and inhumanity lies the un-stoppable power of life. Dare I say of Love.
Today is one of those days when, "finding the light newly blocked on one side", it is time to "turn in another." The immigration dilemmas will probably get worse before they get better. It doesn't have to be this way. Seeking resilience....
Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resilience of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
Mitochondria, figs – all this resinous, unretractable earth.
Source: Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems by Jane Hirshfeld, New York: Harper Perennial 2002 p.71