Today’s episode is guest hosted by Maggie Smith.

Transcript

I’m Maggie Smith and this is The Slowdown.

Nearly all of us have visited or relocated to a place where the trees, birds, bodies of water, and weather patterns are different from what we’re used to. We’re confronted with that newness daily. Years ago I spent a couple of weeks in Tucson, Arizona, as a poet-in-residence at the university there. One of the graduate students told me that all the new poets write desert poems during the first semester. I laughed because I knew I’d be writing some desert poems, too.

I’ve lived in Ohio so long, that when I travel I automatically compare my surroundings to home. In Texas, I notice how the trees are not Ohio trees. In Northern California, the air is misty and moist—not like Ohio. It’s funny how, despite the great distance, Ireland is one of the places that feels most like Ohio to me, thanks to the wide expanses of green.

When I’m new to a place, I’m surprised, even caught off guard, by the landscape. I approach it with a sense of wonder. To quote Emily Dickinson, “Wonder—is not precisely knowing /And not precisely knowing not.” A poem is the ideal place to attend to wonder. A poem is a site of discovery, not only for the reader but for the writer. A place where the writer might learn what they think, through the process of writing. When I travel, I can’t help but pull images and metaphors from the places I visit.

One of the things I love about being in a new place is experiencing the flora and fauna of that place. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? When we learn a new place, we also learn who we are in that new place. We learn new ways to be ourselves.

Today’s poem is from one of my favorite poetry anthologies of the past few years, You Are Here. It’s a collection of nature poems edited by U.S. Poet Laureate, and former Slowdown host, Ada Limón. This poem is about moving to a new place and learning the names for what she finds there. But it’s also about wonder and possibility. Like all living creatures, we adapt to our surroundings. We find new ways to thrive.

Rabbitbrush
by Molly McCully Brown

I’ve never seen the winter
at eight thousand feet:

long stands of lodgepole pines
washed white, miles of cliff face

snowcapped and sheer 
and silvered with lichen,

slow herds of mule deer
hugging the fencelines

wind-whipped and sure
where they’re heading.

Do the aspens turn yellow before
they go bare? There’s a stand

on the road where I’ve
bought a small house,

a red painted door,
some land.

What hubris, to strike out
for somewhere cold enough

to kill you knowing nothing
at all. Not even the name

of the undergrowth thatching
the slope. A neighbor says

rabbitbrush, and I should be afraid
to be so unprepared: herdless

human, without instinct
for the West. But what

comes first is wonder
at the word, at having woken

someplace new. I once believed
I wouldn’t see another winter.

“Rabbitbrush” by Molly McCully Brown published in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, an anthology edited by Ada Limón, Milkweed Editions © 2023 Molly McCully Brown. Used by permission of the poet.