Tag: Ada Limon

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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we’re small
and flawed,
but I want to be
who I am

— Ada Limon, from “The Problem with Travel” in Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015) (via Read a Little Poetry)

Notes:

  • Photo of me by Cara Denison at 6:35 am this morning at low tide. Thank you Cara. 21° F, feels like 8° F, with wind gusts up to 15 mph. January 30, 2025. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here (twilight to sunrise) and here (my duck friends)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

What I hope for…

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“What I hope for,” Limón said, “is a sort of soothing. I don’t mean just for humans, but for animals, plants and every living creature.”

— Elisabeth Egan, from “A Poem Hitches a Ride on a Rocket, to Infinity and Beyond.” NASA and the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón may not be obvious collaborators, but a Jupiter-bound mission helped them find common ground. (NY Times, October 25, 2024)

Notes:

  • Photograph: Europa Clipper Lifts Off From Kennedy Space Center. NASA/Kim Shiflett
  • Listen to Ada Limón read her poem here.
  • In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa by Ada Limón:

    Arching under the night sky inky
    with black expansiveness, we point
    to the planets we know, we

    pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
    we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
    of the universe, expert and evident.

    Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
    the whale song, the songbird singing
    its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

    We are creatures of constant awe,
    curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
    at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

    And it is not darkness that unites us,
    not the cold distance of space, but
    the offering of water, each drop of rain,

    each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
    O second moon, we, too, are made
    of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

    We, too, are made of wonders, of great
    and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
    of a need to call out through the dark.

Here I am again. I’m full of faults.

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And I think that as I’ve aged, I realized everything is an ongoing process. And that it isn’t something that suddenly you’ve done this work and therefore you become enlightened, right? That you’re like, oh, you wake up one day and be like, oh, guess what, I don’t have an ego. I’m not bothered by anything. And instead, of course, it’s just the ongoing slog of being a human and returning to the practice. And OK, here we are again. That’s bothering me. Here I am again. I’m full of faults. […]

I usually sit for at least 15 minutes a day. Sometimes in the morning and sometimes at night. At night, it’s usually because I’ve forgotten to do it in the morning. Or I had something early, an early flight or something like that. But I try to start my day with it. I also try to do — set an intention every day that I just hold with me throughout the day. And sometimes it’s just like, oh, I’m feeling a little stressed out, and I’ll just say let’s just think about ease. And I’ll say, just keep saying the word ease and it comes up. And then my meditation practice — it differs. Sometimes it’s — I think the core is always love and kindness. That’s what I learned many, many years ago. And that’s my fallback.

— Ada Limón, from “Ezra Klein Interviews Ada Limón” (Ezra Klein Show, May 24, 2022)

That’s how this machine works

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There’s how I don’t answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend I’m not home when people knock. There’s daytime silent when I stare, and a nighttime silent when I do things. There’s shower silent and bath silent and […] car silent and then there’s the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can’t be quiet anymore. That’s how this machine works.

— Ada Limón, excerpt from “The Quiet Machine”, in Bright Dead Things: Poems 

Notes: Portrait by Lucas Marquardt @ About Ada. Passage via antigonick

When Eve walked (among them)

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When Eve walked among
the animals and named them –
nightingale, red-shouldered hawk,
fiddler crab, fallow deer –
I wonder if she ever wanted
them to speak back, looked into
their wide wonderful eyes and
whispered, Name me, name me.

~ Ada Limón, “A Name” in The Carrying: Poems (August 14, 2018)

Ada Limón, 42, is an American poet. She was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry.  In an interview by Suzannah Windsor in April 21, 2014 in Compose Journal, Ada Limón: “My grandfather on my father’s side was from San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico. He crossed the border as a child in 1917 after his family’s land was confiscated by Pancho Villa’s troops during the Mexican revolution. I was not raised in a bilingual family. My grandfather rarely spoke Spanish even. He worked hard to assimilate into U.S. culture, growing up in a foster family, and eventually graduating from college. I have always identified with Mexican culture, but like many of us, I am not only one thing. I’m many things. I’m Irish, and Scottish, and German too. Part lion. Part dragon. Depending on the day…My confession: most of my poems are autobiographical. The strange, twisty narrative of the inner voice, the voice underneath the voice, is always what fascinates me and keeps me writing… I suppose, in my life, I’ve never done things the ordinary way. I’m either deep in the bottom of the well or nowhere near water.”  Her new book, The Carrying: Poems was published this month. (Unrelated Photo above by Yishuwang)