TRANSCRIPT

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

I was talking to a friend recently who wrote a book about a long journey, made mostly on foot, and we agreed: Our devices keep us in touch with loved ones, but they also make it easy for us to not see them in person. They keep us informed of what’s happening in the world, but they also keep us from the world. More than ever, I feel drawn toward the analog and away from the digital. I’m drawn to real experiences, unfettered by screens.

My friend and I both want to prioritize experiences that don’t require our phones. What’s most heartening, perhaps, is that Gen Z is deliberately choosing to live more of their lives offline. To get out and do things. The kids are all right, it seems.

Today’s poem makes its many, intentional observations at the pace of a good, long walk.

Laurelhurst
by David Biespiel

                                   Jung of the hedge —
With a sky bluest past the blind
Eye of the sun, the rocks of clouds
Banked at the horizon behind the 
Ticking wind in the trees, now and then
The black-legged crossing of a shadow,
Then a restless stroke of green-on-yellow
Wings along the hedges, the arrow-sharp
Leaves, or along the low, silver fences, 
Along bark and sawed limbs and stray crows.
Everything a little-late-May-still-wet,
Full hour from last light,
Then splotches, then ash 
Of stars in the milling, rich, wet 
Silica sponge of the sky.
The moment I can taste the rain
Gurgling in the air, the gray
Paste of clouds through the tree limbs,
Like a wash or a stain, with the 
Odor of evening traffic, my eyes
Begin to see, and I’m sitting in the kitchen-
Dark, at the formica table,
Short of breath, my grief as large
As a son’s. Alone in such an hour
My body is a scar aching behind my neck.
Patch of green lawn, newly 
Planted corn, tomatoes, wayside
Compost deep in the ground —
The day I dug out the garden
I felt like weeping, and later, in bed,
Watching the sky pass inside the 
Open windows, I slept
Crooked as a feather
Poking out of the brim of a hat.
In the metal wisp of stars, 
In the testimony of dogs asleep on the floor,
In the face of conversion that is wind
In the window sashes, I remember 
The pink and white roses, 
Lapping of water in a silver bowl, 
Silver and red tomato cages,
Blue planters, a wooden 
Fence like a hedge 
So deep in memory
The season bleeds with it.
The year I left home
I planted lettuce. Gray rabbits
Waited all afternoon for
Us to leave, like a fire gone out.
Next, in the one, last,
Good hour of daylight, the
Furrows of lettuce slanting in
The vanishing point of shade,
The rabbits worked the leaves out,
One by one, like a thought
Cut in half. I can see them 
Bent over, weighted down.
Later, at the rust-side
Of summer’s end,
I’d have planted a new
Shadow of lettuce leaves, 
Which in the evening
Sank in the dirt 
Like water in a pond.

“Laurelhurst” by David Biespiel from BEAUTIFUL IS THE WORLD © 2026 David Biespiel. Used by permission of Unbound Edition Press.