I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown. down.

My wife and I talk a lot about retiring, debating where we will spend our golden years.

Right now, Cape Cod is slightly edging out Florida.

Travels overseas have us go big.

We dream of a small chalet in the south of France,

an Italian farmhouse on the outskirts of a medieval village, a waterfront villa in Puerto Rico.

We are many years away from retirement, but the exercise gets us in touch with our priorities.

We want breathtaking views in a natural environment,

a sanctuary worthy of the untangled years behind us, and of course a place to put our books.

Today's poem knows some environments awaken us daily to the wonders. Maybe that is Paradise, a place of first

permission to go on loving the world.

Refugia by Tracy Brimhall.

I didn't know I loved Kansas with its wind scurling through the arms of windmills.

It's filled gravid with lavender,

its subscriptions for sunflowers.

I thought I was pollen complaint and water hunger.

I didn't know I loved the hopeful ugliness of signets,

or that a group of vultures is called awake,

or that a skull oxbows with a signature unique as a fingerprint.

I thought I loved to verb through the days, but spring a null of that marriage, giving me to stillness.

I didn't know I would love the discourse of chickadees in the redbud and insects at rest on my books,

...