TRANSCRIPT

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

I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know where I’m going—by which I mean in the big, existential way. I know I was born from my parents—I understand how biology works, more or less—and I know that when I die, I will be cremated or buried, depending on what my will stipulates (if I ever get around to it on my list of things to do). But these answers are more about the physical body and less about the soul. I don’t understand the soul—its arrivals and departures are not marked on some sort of train schedule, after all. 

I went to church with my parents as a child, but I stopped going when I was a teenager. At the time, I felt like that church wasn’t aligned with my values. I needed to step away. In many ways I’m still that girl. And yet, as I grow older, I feel myself… softening. I’m more open to different viewpoints, and part of that is maturation, but part of it is also exposure. I have friends and family from many different faith traditions—a wider variety than I had in my life as a child. These days I have friends who are ministers, friends who are theologians, and friends who are atheists. I learn from all of them.

My friend, the poet Dana Levin, once said that my poems are “God Curious,” and I loved that description. Part of what I do in my poems is pose existential questions to myself, and think—and feel—my way into them. That’s not the same as answering them! Luckily, poems don’t require us to have answers.

Today’s poem is a poem that inspires me to ask better questions about the world, and about the soul, and about the idea of God.

Soot
by Kaveh Akbar

                     Sometimes God comes to earth disguised as rust,
chewing away a chain link fence or a mariner’s knife.
                    From up so close we must seem
clumsy and gloomless, like new lovers 

                                     undressing in front of each other
                                                        for the first time. Regarding loss, I’m afraid
                                     to keep it in the story,
                                                       worried what I might bring back to life,

                     like the marble angel who woke to find
his innards scattered around his feet.
                     Blood from the belly tastes sweeter
than blood from anywhere else. We know this

                                    but don’t know why — the woman on TV
                                                     dabs a man’s gutwound with her hijab
                                    then draws the cloth to her lips, confused.
                                                     I keep dreaming I’m a creature pulling out my claws

                     one by one to sell in a market stall next to stacks
of pomegranates and garden tools. It’s predictable,
                     the logic of dreams. Long ago I lived in Heaven 
because I wanted to. When I fell to earth

                                   I knew the way — through the soot, into the leaves.
                                                   It still took years. Upon landing, the ground
                                   embraced me sadly, with the gentleness
                                                   of someone delivering tragic news to a child.

“Soot" by Kaveh Akbar from CALLING A WOLF A WOLF © 2017 Kaveh Akbar. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Edition.