Hi, it's slowdown producer Micah Kielbon. This spring, we asked you to help us curate the poems we share on the show,

to submit poems that have helped you pause and reflect in this busy world.

In just a few days, we received almost 300 submissions.

The slowdown team selected five to feature this week.

We couldn't get a hold of today's submitter

to tell us why they sent in this poem, but for us it was almost a no-brainer selection.

For me, this is a summer of baby showers, seeing people I knew in my own childhood now midway through their journeys of bringing new life into the world.

It's beautiful and it's strange too to be on this journey together.

We need to share every word in the book to make sense of that mystery of how we get here. I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown.

At a party, one friend was bothered by another asking

at a party, one friend was bothered by another asking guests if they wanted to hold her three-month-old baby.

We were a large group gathered in the backyard for a graduation celebration.

My bothered friends mixed feelings about bringing a human being into an unstable world

colored her experiences with newborns.

Yet what I saw in the mother was someone beset in the wake of this

imponderable wonder. She wanted us to feel what she felt,

awe and looking into her baby's eyes, to hold close to our bodies its sweet innocence.

Raising a child is a hugely personal decision.

When my adult son announced casually in our kitchen, he planned to live his life child free,

I found myself hoping that he would reconsider his decision.

Not because I possess a hidden desire to continue a bloodline, but

...