1445: Hackberry by Cecily Parks

Today’s poem is Hackberry by Cecily Parks. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a kind of love poem—to a beloved tree, and to the sense of home it created.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant! by Bridget Bell. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem captures a time of grief in the speaker’s life, when life goes a little quiet after a flurry of support and care.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Come Back! by Camille Guthrie. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “One of the poets I discovered in college was H.D.. Born Hilda Doolittle, she published under her initials. I remember being wowed by her poems, which were experimental and strange, unlike anything I’d read before—and unlike anything I’ve read since.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Apocatastasis by G.C. Waldrep. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When a poet, or a child, plays with figurative language, they explore the possibilities and the boundaries of the words we use to describe the world around us. Life will throw at us things that are hard or impossible to describe, both beautiful and awful things. So I think that kind of play isn't just a writing tool—it's a life skill.”Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Birthday Wish by David Groff. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem muses on different kinds of knowing without privileging one over the other. What we know vs. what animals know vs. what plants know, for instance. 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." Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is New Year by Kate Baer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Is it too late to wish you all a Happy New Year? I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s ever an expiration date on well wishes, and frankly, we need all the well wishes we can get for 2026!” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is I Have Lost It by Monica Ferrell. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I’ve misplaced—or lost—many things in my life, but a few come to mind because losing them pained me. A few Polaroid pictures of a loved one who’s gone now. Some vintage clothes I was attached to. A long handwritten letter. At first, losing those irreplaceable items felt like losing the keys to that loved one, that place, that time. But I eventually realized the doors to those memories are still there — and to my surprise, they’re always unlocked. I can open them with my mind … my imagination … whenever I want. Do I wish I still had the things I treasured—the keys to those doors? Yes, of course I do. But I don’t need them.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Long Now by Robin Beth Schaer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem addresses a child—a child full of questions about the world. It reminds me that as parents, we don’t need to have the answers, and we don’t need to pretend to have them. Instead we can listen, stay open, and honor our kids’ curiosity and wonder. Honor the poets and philosophers that they are.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Now that we’ve been married all these years, by Keetje Kuipers. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… "I can remember a few “beforetimes” in my own life, though some are foggier than others. It’s hard for me to clearly imagine the life I had before my kids. It’s also hard for me to conjure the life I had with my ex-husband, and the life I had before him. Now is so… well, present. I’m happy, and I feel like my life is as it should be. I don’t want to go back. But the past is never really past; it’s with us, because it changes us. The past shaped who we are in the present. Today’s poem is a love poem, one in which the long-married speaker can hardly imagine their own “beforetimes”—the life before their spouse."Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Vacation by Sara Moore Wagner. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “It feels like a quintessential American experience, taking your kids to the beach. I remember trips to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Ocean City, Maryland, when I was young — road trips in the family minivan, because it was more affordable to get a family of five to the coast by car than by plane. (My first flight wasn’t until I was twenty years old, but that’s another story for another day.)” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp