Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

One day, my dad told me a story about a chess game he played against Louis Kahn. I became obsessed with the famed architect, gathering anecdotes to remember and retell. He attended my high school, and back then an art teacher inspired him to pursue his profession. But my favorite story is told by city planner Edmund Bacon—who coincidentally is actor Kevin Bacon’s dad—in the documentary My Architect. In response to a call to reimagine a new downtown, Kahn proposed a city without cars, a utopian vision of Philly with an underground pedestrian esplanade, walkways, and towers of circular garages on the outskirts of town. Ed Bacon believed Kahn was living in fantasyland. However, over half a century later, as we debate climate crisis and sustainability, Kahn seems far ahead of his time. His architectural philosophy and projects sought to instill a balance between nature and buildings. His own landscapes were spiritual monuments to light and wind.

The documentary is imminently quotable, but what stays with me is a moment of Kahn talking to architecture students at UPenn. He says: "When you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature.” I love this idea, even in relation to poetry.

Today’s poem highlights the fierce omnipresence of nature, even in environments where we are trained not to notice, or are too busy to do so.

Morning Glory
by Patricia Spears Jones

Sunlight softens   helicopters hover
skies above Brooklyn   Presidential
Visit, murder investigation, matters little
Noise in the skies, noise on the ground

You should prune the morning glories
I tell my elderly neighbor.
She refuses. She likes the way the vine has
Curled around her fence with a ferocity
That cannot be so easily cut back. I get that.

Wildness is rare on a Brooklyn city block,
Old roses return late May as if to say, ha! you
Think we do not know the season? Squirrels
Roam the bricks of buildings, while the gleaners 
Fight with raccoons for the spoils of left-out trash.

Huge green leaves for plants with names
Unknown to me sparkle on mornings bright
And dead tree leaves demand constant sweeping away.

The tabby is big, old, and tired—too many kittens
Not enough food—these are ungenerous cat lovers.

Neighbors greet each other and shake their heads
At the young men and women, mostly, but not
all Whitefolk running running—or their faces
Drowning in a pool of handheld devices.

You almost wish they smoked or cursed
Had personality—but they run and run and run
Thus, the joy of this vibrant morning-glory vine
Rooted in her garden’s disarray—happily dominating.

Oh, morning glory—purple, green
Leaves plump as Italian cookies, blossom
your hearty display for all to see, hold your
vine’s haven on Macon Street. Only

Winter, harsh winter will take your vines
Back to the ground  your wildness calmed.

“Morning Glory” by Patricia Spears Jones, from The Beloved Community. Copyright © 2023 by Patricia Spears Jones. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.