Hey, it's Ada Limone. Right now I'm serving as U.S. Poet Laureate, but before that I was the host of the slowdown.

This month we are celebrating the five-year anniversary of this public

media program and I'm so glad we get to share this special milestone together.

Listeners are the heart of this show.

For the past five years, you've tuned to the slowdown

for a precious moment of poetry.

And I'm honored to have been able to share some of those moments with you.

Thank you for everything you do to support the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown. I don't have a bucket list. Why? Maybe because I fear that my desired experiences might sound to run-of-the-mill,

or overly exotic.

For example, I want to hike the Appalachian Trail, take a sailing trip around

Chile's Cape Horn. Attend the Met Gala and its after--party and if I can muster the courage to take a bite of a poisonous puffer fish

prepared by a specially licensed chef then pray I do not die. See what I mean? Truth is, I dislike the

checklist approach to life, the one and done, so on to the next thing.

In my life, I have walked the great wall of China,

toward the Maasai Mara in Kenya, visited with and listened to children in a refugee camp,

and edit the annual anthology Best American Poetry.

All illuminating and joyful accomplishments,

but I would never place them on a record of conquered aspirations.

I sought thieves and other experiences spontaneously out of my own values, which themselves

reflect an ardent commitment to life in its beauty and its pain and its awe.

Bucket lists orient people toward the future. True. They can sweep one ahead into a

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