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.
.

Video created for The Universe in Verse 2018, curated and hosted by Maria Popova.

Poem: “Optimism” by Jane Hirshfield, read by the author.
Film concept by Maria Popova and Kelli Anderson.
Papercraft animation by Kelli Anderson.
Music: “Optimist” by Zoë Keating.

“Optimism” appears in Jane Hirshfield’s Each Happiness Ringed by Lions: Selected Poems.