Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

Spring is here, or it’s coming, at least here in Kentucky. The grasses are getting greener and the trees are starting to put on their big blossomy shows. It reminds me that things are ongoing, that life is ongoing, the cycles of it, the continuity. Right when I’m about to surrender to the dark edges of winter’s bleakness, a couple flowers come up, a couple of sunny days show up like old friends I haven’t seen for ages. And here I am, suddenly smiling as if maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be okay.

Sometimes I think it’s easier to just give up. To just give in to the doom and the fear that’s all around us. But I don’t like doing the easy thing. I like earning my time on this planet. Just the other day, all the birds at the feeder got terrified and flew off when a Cooper’s Hawk cruised over us. But right after he left, they all came back, willing to feast their little hearts out. I want to be like those birds. Willing to come back to pleasure, when the shadow is no longer circling above us.

Today’s poem reminds us that even though there are so many worries, so many fears, we are still here, still using our mouths to speak back to the world.

until the meteor makes a shadow over home
by Mihee Kim

                                                                      I.
			
                     a lonely bird asked me if it’s over
		
                     is it over. is it over

                     will   the   seat  of  our  betrayals   rise   up   and   punch  us?
                     uppercut, jab, loosen  the  bowels  of  our  anger  into  poem

                     will  we  lose  our  hold  on  our  children,  our  mothers,   our 
                     mortgages 


                                                                      II.

                     sprawl  as  though  you   are   teeming  with  the  ambulatory                           
                     instinct  of  a  centipede.  would  that  we  could escape  our 
                     fate by running in a zig zag too


                                                                     III.

                     how  long  until  men stop making homes in the skin of  other
                     men 

                     lycra, like raw, lick law. see it’s a game

                     how long will they feed their children with their own 
                     image, with someone else’s breast, with someone’s 
                     something isn’t right

                     like the  moment you get too high, and your mind  searches 
                     for fear

                     a pulse beats into a heart as the barnacle
                     waits for wave


                                                                     IV.
		
                     I   listen   to   a   loud   and   violent   conversation   between 
                     neighbors  and  think,   it  couldn’t  be  time   for   us  to  die. 
                     we’ve  just   begun  making  art.  exciting  memory  particles 
                     on  the   bed  of   the   ocean,  embracing   the   caterpillar’s 
                     fuzziness        as        a       conduit       into        infinity,      no 
                     transmogrifying    needed    as   distraction,   no    sustained 
                     thoughts  about  self,  no worrisome  headache  from  flying 
                     off   the   sad    pills    too   fast.    alright,  I  mean   me.   I’ve
                     just    started.     at    the    beginning    of   this  infinitesimal
                     roar is a song in a clamor of minors. 


                                                                      V.
		
                     jagged   the   harp   into   singing,  gentle   the   feet   of   your 
                     elephant  and  we’ll   hold  each  other’s   tails  if  only,  if  only
                     to  find  a  way  to  our  forebears’  graves  so  we  can  mourn
                     properly. 

                     It  couldn’t  be  we’re dying, we’re  dead, we’re  losing, we’ve 
                     lost. It couldn’t be.
	
                     I’m saying, I’m saying.

"until the meteor makes a shadow over home" by Mihee Kim. Used by permission of the poet.