TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith and this is The Slowdown. 

I remember once, making my morning coffee, I said to my daughter: “I know I had a dream last night, but I can’t quite remember it.” And Violet, then only about six years old, said, “Like a hawk circling your head.” I’m sure my eyes widened. What a beautiful simile for that feeling of something just beyond your reach.

Another time, my son, watching a squirrel hop from the roof of a house to the limb of a tree to a power line, remarked “Like a secret sidewalk in the sky.” And then he looked up at me and asked, “Is that a poem?” I laughed. He was only about four years old. I told him it wasn’t a poem, but it was the start of one—one that he could write someday if he wanted to. I wasn’t about to steal his material! 

I’m not telling you these stories because I think my children are prodigies, or that they have some sort of poetry gene. They don’t. And I don’t either! What we have is something that everyone has: the ability to pay attention, to approach the world with curiosity, and to make connections. That’s all a metaphor or simile is: a connection. You see something, and it reminds you of something else. You build a little bridge in your mind.

Children naturally know how to do this. They’re building these bridges all the time, making sense of what they newly encounter by comparing it to what they already know. 

A dandelion looks like the sun. The top of an acorn is like a little hat. A crescent moon is like a smile.

Today’s poem is one of my favorite kinds of poems—a list. And not any list, but a list of similes. This poet builds bridge after bridge, line after line. Don’t worry—I won’t give you homework, but maybe, just maybe, after listening to this poem, you’ll be inspired to make a list of your own. I wonder what bridges you might build.

The Song of Songs of Songs of Songs
by Jeremy Radin

& your eyes are like a sisterhood


& your lungs are like a pear tree split in a storm


& your ankle is like a hospital


& your shoulder is like the negation of a grave


& your shadow is like being held inside a cello as it is played


& your wrist is like the Moses of wrists


& your voice is like someone giving someone the sea


& your hand is like a lamp that is whispering


& your knee is like a snow leopard’s face in the snow


& your ears are like a pair of golden radios


& your nose is like a planet fallen in a forest


& your legs are like the edges of sleep


& your laugh is like a wedding of dragonflies


& your tongue is like the Sabbath inside of the Sabbath


& your neck is like a secret month


& your hair is like the sound of someone learning

“The Song of Songs of Songs of Songs” by Jeremy Radin. Used by permission of the poet.