A beautiful persistence

Can you feel it? The country is beginning to move, slowly, haltingly, with an uneven gait. But there is movement, like the green tendrils of spring stirring under the melting blankets of snow. You can almost smell it like the awakening of the earth. I love this poem, which arrived in my inbox courtesy of the Writer's Almanac today (it is the poet's birthday--happy birthday, Jane Hirshfield!):

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance 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.

"Optimism" by Jane Hirshfield, from Given Sugar, Given Salt. © Harper Collins, 2002.

God, may we each know the persistence of love and hope in our lives, standing firm on our stated ideal and loving vision, watching the horizon, and celebrating in the signs of a new season for our families, for this country, and for the world. Amen.