TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I think attention is a form of love. I know this as a parent, a friend, a teacher, and a poet. So many of my poems were made possible only because I took the time to look at my surroundings, listen to the wind and the birds, touch leaves to know their textures, breathe deeply to describe what the autumn air smelled like. Being sensitive, attuned, observant—these things don’t just improve your writing, they improve your life.

I know this, but knowing it doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to stay tuned in and attentive in the moment. My attention is also constantly tugged at by the stuff of life, and I know I’m not alone in that. You feel the tugs, too. The tug of deadlines. The tug of endless emails. (My inbox never stops tugging!) The tug of children, and school, and family obligations. The tugs of to-do lists and errands.

The present is full of distractions, but it’s more than that. One of the gifts and one of the burdens of being human is our ability to remember the past, and also to look ahead to the future. We’re reflectors, and we’re dreamers. So often in any given day, I’m thinking about the past or planning for the future—thinking about work, or trips I’d like to take, or things I can look forward to. 

I’m trying to do better: to put my phone away when I’m out with friends and family. To resist documenting experiences by taking photos or taking notes. To just BE.

Today’s poem speaks to the challenge of staying in the present moment, and having gratitude for that moment, when memory is always doing what it does best: calling to us from afar.

Wind, Blue Sky
by Susan Aizenberg

I am practicing being
in the moment,

to think wind, blue sky,
grandson singing

in his stroller—feygele,
for little bird,

as my mother would 
say. I am trying

to feel the ropy muscles
of my legs tighten

and release, rhythmic
as a metronome,

with every step, to feel
on my skin, tangible

as some human touch,
the soft morning air.

I am trying to attend
to the distant crow,

if he is a crow. I am 
practicing at practicing—

but here comes memory,
insistent as the bird’s

cry, sparked this time
by an old photo 

my son’s hung beside
the guestroom bed

I rise from each day—
my smiling dead mother

caught in the moment
he’s made her laugh,

their heads close
together as they tread

the shimmering water
of a Lauderdale pool

her face wet and crinkled
with joy. He has taped

below the frame’s border
a strip torn from her calendar,

sad prophecy in her lefty scrawl,
“Sunday, 4PM, Wedding!!!”

A date she’d never see.
Bring your attention

gently back. So here’s 
my grandson, watching

a sunstruck white car.
See the white car?

See the nice man walking
his doggie? See the big tree?

And here are three young girls, 
long braids shining,

passing on their bikes. 
One lifts her fishing rod

in greeting and is gone.

"Wind, Blue Sky" by Susan Aizenberg. Used by permission of the poet.