Episode Overview

Podcast: The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
Host: Maggie Smith
Episode: 1441: Birthday Wish by David Groff
Air Date: January 23, 2026

This reflective episode centers on the theme of knowing—how humans, animals, and plants experience and interpret the world differently. Through a gentle personal anecdote and the thoughtful reading of David Groff's poem "Birthday Wish," host Maggie Smith explores the limitations and gifts of knowledge, and the particular power of poetry to articulate what resists straightforward answers.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Age of Instant Knowledge

• Modern Convenience vs. Human Experience (00:51 - 02:07)
  • Maggie notes how easily we access facts today—via Google, Alexa, or smartphones (“You can Google almost anything or just ask Alexa. I hear my kids doing that sometimes.”).
  • She reminisces about the 1980s, when her parents relied on a trivia-savvy friend, Mark, for information, creating a slower, more uncertain process (“If my parents were lucky, Mark would be there and...he'd probably have an answer...Of course, there wasn't a quick way of fact checking him.”).

The Value of Uncertainty

• Not Everything Has an Easy Answer (02:08 - 02:29)
  • Maggie contrasts "knowable" facts with the "slippery" nature of human experience:

    “So much is knowable. But then there's everything else. Human experience is slippery. Not everything has an easy answer."

  • Poetry, she argues, excels in helping us grip these less tangible truths:

    "This is where poetry really shines and really comes in handy...Poetry helps us articulate what we don't fully understand.”

Introduction to the Poem

• The Unique Knowledge of Living Things (02:30 - 02:55)
  • Previewing “Birthday Wish,” Maggie highlights its meditation on types of knowing:

    "...muses on different kinds of knowing without privileging one over the other—what we know versus what animals know versus what plants know."

  • She frames the poem as a reminder that humans "don't need to know or be everything"—that knowledge can be simple, sufficient, and particular.

Poem Reading: "Birthday Wish" by David Groff

(02:56 - 04:03)

Maggie reads the poem, inviting listeners to consider the humble wisdom of dogs and trees:

• The dog "doesn't know he's a dog, though he knows all he needs to know to be a dog."
• The tree, unconcerned with spelling "chlorophyll" or "chill," simply knows to respond naturally to the seasons.
• Both living things accept their cycles and coming ends unselfconsciously.
• The final wish:

  “May I like the dog, the tree, their limbs, their bark, their barklessness, the coming fall, the fire, the hatchet and the rot know only what I need to be.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Poetry’s Role (02:16)

“If you want a factoid, go to the Internet or call Mark. If you want a different kind of truth, go to poems. Poetry doesn't make our experience less slippery, but I think it helps us get a kind of grip on it.”
— Maggie Smith

On Life’s Knowledge (02:40)

“I think of us humans as being on a need to know basis, and this poem reminds me that we don't need to know or be everything.”
— Maggie Smith

The Poet’s Wish (03:53)

“May I ... know only what I need to be.”
— Read by Maggie Smith from David Groff’s "Birthday Wish"

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|---------------------------------------------------| | 00:51–02:07| Reflections on instant knowledge and childhood | | 02:08–02:29| Slipperiness of human experience; intro to poetry | | 02:30–02:55| Introduction to "Birthday Wish" and its themes | | 02:56–04:03| Full reading of "Birthday Wish" |

Episode Takeaway

In her characteristically warm and meditative style, Maggie Smith invites listeners to appreciate not merely the facts we can look up, but the lived, felt, and intuitive knowledge of animals, plants, and ourselves. Poetry, she suggests, has the unique ability to help us hold the unknowable, and reminds us: sometimes, it's enough to simply "know only what [we] need to be.”