TRANSCRIPT

 I'm Myka Kielbon, and this is The Slowdown.

 Sharing poetry is a two-way street. So today, you'll be hearing a poem selected by one of our listeners. Enjoy.

 My name is Rekha Mehra, and I live in Washington, D.C. By profession, I'm an agricultural economist who worked on international development issues related to improving the economic lives — just generally the lives — of low-income women.

I like to think that I live my life in such a way that I somehow bring more to other people's lives as well. I feel like that's sort of been my career. And I think, too, that just in my family as well, having my family and bringing up my children, that I'm making the world livable and enjoyable for them as well. Or even if you're talking about children, in a way making them see the world so that they can enjoy it.

So I had a lovely walk, it was a beautiful day. There is a standard route that I take now, which is to the Capitol and back. It's an interesting street. Besides looking at flowers and listening to the birds and so on, there's also the National Guard that's walking around these days. And then it's always interesting to see all the people, especially in the summertime, and then where they congregate and for what purposes. Because around the Capitol or the Supreme Court, there's always some kind of protest going on, when you have to kind of worry about dodging where you walk freely every day might be closed off. It's always interesting. Even more interesting when nobody's around and you can just walk wherever you feel like.

So today's poem shows us that we are part of nature. We always tend to think of birds and animals and insects sort of as nature abstracted, but they're just like us. We're part of this universe, and in a sense special, but not so special. Which, well, I guess that's the cool thing about poems, that you can extrapolate so much from them. Just overall how creativity can subsume all the difficulties in some sense. This poem somehow evoked those kinds of feelings in me, juxtaposing the difficulty with the enjoyment of life. It's just so positive about the world, and these days I feel like we need a lot of positive about the world.

So Much Space for Song
by James Crews

What made the winter wren say,
this is my home now, as it carried
stick after stick and tufts of grass
to the tractor, shaping a soft place
inside the arm that lifts the bucket?
What gave such a small body
so much space for song, belting out
notes from its perch on top of the seat,
chirping if we get too close to that
hollow where her young are now
hatching, calling out in hunger?
What fills any of us with care enough
to say yes to this difficult world,
taking our places in it, despite
the risks, knowing the dangers?
Watch how the wren shrinks itself
to fit inside the tractor we haven’t
driven in weeks, where tiny beings
have just emerged from eggs the size
of marbles, each one filled with
the songs of their mother and father,
a music that’s larger than this
one life we are given.

“So Much Space for Song” by JAMES CREWS from TURNING TOWARD GRIEF © 2025 James Crews. Used by permission of the poet.

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