Two poems: Ada Limón and Michael Garrigan

Two poems I encountered this morning in my Kitty Petruccelli workshop that I want to return to. Ada Limón is well known to me, but I had not heard of Michael Garrigan. And with no further ado:

Ancestors

Ada Limón

I’ve come here from the rocks, the bonelike chert,
            obsidian, lava rock. I’ve come here from the trees—

chestnut, bay laurel, toyon, acacia, redwood, cedar,

one thousand oaks
            that bend with moss and old man’s beard.
I was born on a green couch on Carriger Road between
            the vineyards and the horse pasture.

I don’t remember what I first saw, the brick of light
            that unhinged me from the beginning. I don’t remember

my brother’s face, my mother, my father.

            Later, I remember leaves, through car windows,
through bedroom windows, through the classroom window,

the way they shaded and patterned the ground, all that
            power from roots. Imagine you must survive

without running? I’ve come from the lacing patterns of leaves,

            I do not know where else I belong.

Ode to the Ailanthus Growing Out of a Pile of Rubble at the Edge of Pennsy’s Supply Depot on Paxton Street in Harrisburg

Michael Garrigan

The highway is your mother— 
seed spun off wheels or maybe a roof 
& you were born in this ragged rubble pile
growing and reaching towards the constant concrete 
thrumming above you; somehow you find nutrients in the slag
heap along the roadside ditch in this forgotten corner of a railyard
in a forgotten part of a city that people only ever drive through, not to; 
but here you are, shading the cracked macadam and iced tea cans and our 
everyday plastics and here I am complaining about this cornered ecosystem 
and overdevelopment and how this city pollutes the river with raw sewage 
each time it rains and the air quality that’s so bad because of the traffic I am 
driving in and how all the invasive species are taking over our riverlands 
growing in our slashing and forgotten selfishness and as the light turns 
green I remember that some call you the tree-of-heaven and wrap you 
with broad clear tape that catches the larvae of the spotted lantern fly
—two unwanted disparaged species that have found each other—
while others just cut each of you they find down, trying to rid
this landscape of your seed, but perhaps what’s been planted 
and spread and found rootholds in this land is never 
easily removed and perhaps it shouldn’t be perhaps
each of us has a right to be where we found
ourselves, just waking up suddenly in life
sharing the same sound we are all born int
—a watery silence and then our own voice.

As Kitty pointed out, this poem is in the shape of a pregnant belly, but unfortunately the web page format here doesn't preserve that. You can see it in its original form here (which includes a line break before the fourth-to-last line that wasn't in the version Kitty provided). Ah, poetry.