Hi, I'm poet and editor Leslie Signs.

I'll be taking on the host chair for the slowdown the next two weeks,

but don't worry.

Major will be back on July 1st.

I can't wait to share my selections with you.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. I once asked three-year-old roaming to draw a picture of a tree. I expected him to reach for a brown crayon from his crayola box, to draw a

trunk whose parallel lines arc up and away, and then to reach for an emerald crayon to make a crown of leaves, like a green

afro. Instead, he grabbed a dandelion colored crayon and began making a sun.

He scribbled circles over and over until it shone bright.

Then, with great concentration concentration he peered into the box and chose a

black crayon. He drew a line from one side of the page to the other, put the crayon down and said, done.

I said, roaming, where's the tree?

He said, below the ground, daddy daddy it's a seed and the sun is taking care of it.

I had to orient myself in that moment toward the consciousness of my toddler's son.

It was liberating.

I thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Quote, the sun illuminates only the eye of the man,

but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.

The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each

other, who has retained the spirit of infancy, even into the era of manhood.

Every poem is a bridge between nature and us,

in that what lies hidden, what is below, is somehow familiar and brought to

consciousness, the forms of poems like Rome's tree, project meaning.

...