← The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
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Jimmy Conrad here, and I have something to put on your radar. The core short from Vuori, because after getting my first pair, I was hooked. They work for everything that I like doing soccer, tennis hoops and lifting weights, to name a few. And they're unbelievably comfortable, which is why I wear them doing everything else. They are designed to work for whatever your day throws at you. For our listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase, so head to vuori.com footy that's V-U-O-R-I.com F O-O O-T-Y exclusions apply. Visit the site for full details. Foreign.
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I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the Slowdown. Poetry is everywhere. You don't have to look far, but you might do well to look up. Look up and listen. If I do that in my own backyard at any time of year, I see and hear many varieties of birds. House finches, robins, crows. The list goes on. I think we humans are more enamored with birds than with other creatures that fully live on land. Just think of all the idioms we use. Birds of a feather flock together. The early bird catches the worm, and even the unfortunate kill two birds with one stone. We identify with these creatures in some ways as night owls or odd birds, for example, and we envy them in others. Oh, to be free as a bird. There is so much poetic potential in bird songs and calls. Their freedom of movement, their nest building. Their names alone are poems in themselves. The Screaming Cowbird. The Middle American Leaf Tosser. The Splendid Fairy Wren. The Society Kingfisher. The Milky Stork. The Diabolical Nightjar the long Waddled Umbrella Bird. The Dark Eyed White Eye. The bare faced Go away bird. Yes, that's a real animal. I didn't make that up. It has a featherless face, and apparently its call sounds like it's saying go away. Once, during a Q and A after a reading, a woman raised her hand to ask, what's with all the birds in your poems? I had to laugh. She was right. The hawks, grackles, and starlings of my neighborhood have called and swooped into many of my poems. I told her that birds are wildlife that we all have access to no matter where we live. Birds are everywhere, in cities and suburbs, in the country. They make cameo appearances in many of my poems, and sometimes they're even the stars. Today's poem looks up, listens, and leans into the many things we can become open to by finding closeness with these familiar and strange animals. Northern Flicker Reconsidered By Susan Rich if a bird could become a poem, and why not promenade through wayward stanzas, lift their couplets of wings, what then A high wave? Wicca, Wicca alchemical spell, A cry of the unprintable? Could a flicker know heartbreak? Practice self restraint? Their fashion leans bold polka dots and stripes bright cinnamon to morning fog hues the male handsome with his patch of mustache I would become his lifelong mate should I return as a bird celebrated shad spirit cotton rump with the longest bird tongue in North America this ode to to plurality, this epic boundless, then cross stitched together on the pages of Northwest Sky. 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, LowdownShow and Bluesky. Slowdownshow.org. Summer is starting, meaning graduations, wedding season, and annual holidays where we come together to celebrate. We are also marking a less rosy milestone. One year ago, federal funding for public media like the Slowdown was cut. Listeners like you stepped up to keep this program going. As our budget year comes to a close, your support helps to make sure a daily moment of poetry stays a part of your routine. Donate now@slowdownshow.org or click the link in the show notes.