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- [00:02]
A
Mazda Once you discover the Mazda CX5 Mazda, it doesn't take long to get it. With standard all wheel drive, a premium interior and advanced safety features, it's an SUV that gives you more at every turn. It will have you saying Mazda. The Mazda CX5, it's made to move you.
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Every Mazda SUV offers you an elevated driving experience and refined performance. Discover it at your local Mazda dealer today. If your small business is booming and ready to expand, you might say something like it's happening.
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Crushed it.
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But if you need someone who can actually help protect your growing business, just say, like a good neighbor, State Farm. He's there. And just like that, your State Farm agent can help you get the coverage you need for your new space for your small business insurance needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is.
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C
There I'm Maggie Smith and this is the Slow down. I don't know how I got here and I don't know where I'm going, by which I mean in the big existential way. I know I was born from my parents. I understand how biology works, more or less. And I know that when I die I will be cremated or buried, depending on what my will stipulates if I ever get around to it on my list of things to do. But these answers are more about the physical body than and less about the soul. I don't understand the soul. Its arrivals and departures are not marked on some sort of train schedule. After all, I went to church with my parents as a child, but I stopped going when I was a teenager. At the time, I felt like that church wasn't aligned with my values. I needed to step away. In many ways, I'm still that girl. And yet as I grow older, I feel myself softening. I'm more open to different viewpoints, and part of that is maturation, but part of it is also exposure. I have friends and family from many different faith traditions, a wider variety than I had in my life as a child. These days I have friends who are ministers, friends who are theologians, and friends who are atheists. I learn from all of them. My friend, the poet Dana Levin once said that my poems are God curious, and I loved that description. Part of what I do in my poems is is pose existential questions to myself and think and feel my way into them. That's not the same as answering them. Luckily, poems don't require us to have answers. Today's poem is a poem that inspires me to ask better questions about the world and about the soul and and about the idea of God Soot by Kava Akbar Sometimes God comes to earth disguised as rust, chewing away a chain link fence or a mariner's knife. From up so close we must seem clean, clumsy and gloomless, like new lovers undressing in front of each other for the first time. Regarding loss, I'm afraid to keep it in the story, worried what I might bring back to life. Like the marble angel who woke to find his innards scattered around his feet, blood from the belly tastes sweeter than blood from anywhere else. We know this but don't know why. The woman on TV dabs a man's gut wound with her hijab, then draws the cloth to her lips. Confused, I keep dreaming I'm a creature pulling out my claws or one by one to sell in a market stall next to stacks of pomegranates and garden tools. It's predictable, the logic of dreams. Long ago I lived in heaven because I wanted to. When I fell to earth, I knew the way through the soot into the leaves. It still took years. Upon landing, the ground embraced me sadly, with a gentleness of someone delivering tragic news to a child. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter and find us on Instagram @downdownshow and blueskylowdownshow.org hello Slowdown listeners. Poetry Magazine has a special offer just for you. Subscribe to one year of Poetry Magazine today and receive their limited edition tote bag for $39. That's the cost of one Loboo. You'll receive 10 beautifully curated print magazines of contemporary poetry, Unlimited digital access via the Poetry Magazine app and a tote bag. To carry it all. Subscribe today@poetrymagazine.org Slowdown25 to receive this special offer.