838: The Truth

Today’s poem is The Truth by Natasha Rao. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “A pretty common response to loss is to encourage other people to cherish what…and whom… they still have. When someone loses a parent, they remind the people around them to call their own mom and dad more often, or they post on social media to exhort you to hold your loved ones a little bit closer tonight. It’s not bad advice, of course, but in my experience, it’s not the saying I love you that’s hard, or the hug that’s hard, it’s the showing up every day, the long conversations that veer into awkward moments of disagreement or the demands imposed by care or necessity.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Om Podcasten

Host Maggie Smith is your daily poetry companion. Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have to wield our own attention — to consider our own lives and the lives of others, to help us live creatively and compassionately, to use that attention to lean into wonder, and joy, and truth, and to find hope — to keep hoping. The Slowdown community knows that reflecting on a poem, every weekday, can connect us to our inner world and the world around us. Listen as you make your morning coffee, as you go on a walk in your neighborhood, as you pull away from the to-do list, as you resist the dismal, endless scroll to share five minutes of perspective through the lens of poetry, from poets old and new, well-loved and emerging onto the scene. Brought to you by American Public Media, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.