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Maggie Smith
I'm Maggie Smith and this is the Slowdown. Nearly all of us have visited or relocated to a place where the trees, birds, bodies of water, and weather patterns are different from what we are used to. We are confronted with that newness daily. Years ago, I spent a couple of weeks in Tucson, Arizona, as a poet in residence at the university there. One of the graduate students told me that all the new poets write desert poems during the first semester. I laughed because I knew I'd be writing some desert poems, too. I've lived in Ohio so long that when I travel, I automatically compare my surroundings to home. In Texas, I notice how the trees are not Ohio trees. In Northern California, the air is misty and moist, not like Ohio. It's funny how, despite the great distance, Ireland is one of the places that feels most like Ohio to me, thanks to the wide expanses of green. When I'm new to a place, I'm surprised. Even caught off guard by the landscape, I approach it with a sense of wonder. To quote Emily Dickinson, wonder is not precisely knowing and not precisely knowing not. A poem is the ideal place to attend to wonder. A poem is a site of discovery not only for the reader but for the writer, a place where the writer might learn what they think through the process of writing. When I travel, I can't help but pull images and metaphors from the places I visit. One of the things I love about being in a new place is experiencing the flora and fauna of that place. But it's more than that, isn't it? When we learn a new place, we also learn who we are. In that new place. We learn new ways to be ourselves. Today's poem is from one of my favorite poetry anthologies of the past few years. You are Here. It's a collection of nature poems edited by US Poet Laureate and former Slowdown host Ada Limone. This poem is about moving to a new place and learning the names for what she finds there. But it's also about wonder and possibility. Like all living creatures, we adapt to our surroundings. We find new ways to thrive. Rabbit brush by Molly McCauley Brown I've never seen the winter at 8,000ft long stands of lodgepole pines washed white miles of cliff face, snow capped and sheer and silvered with lichen. Slow herds of mule deer hugging the fence lines, wind whipped and sure where they're heading, do the aspens turn yellow before they go bare? There's a stand on the road where I've bought a small house, a red painted door, some land. What hubris to strike out for somewhere cold enough to kill you, knowing nothing at all, not even the name of the undergrowth thatching the slope. A neighbor says, rabbit brush and I should be afraid to be so unprepared, herdless human without instinct for the West. But what comes first is wonder at the word, at having woken someplace new. I once believed I wouldn't see another winter. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. This project is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web@arts.gov to get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter and find us on Instagram at Slowdown Show.