I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

At one point in Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man, the narrator says,

If you don't know where you are, you probably don't know who you are.

In college, I underlined this sentence in my copy of the book because it rang so true.

It still rings true.

I've lived in Central Ohio all of my life.

Being rooted in this place is a big part of who I am.

When I first started writing poems, I wondered if I would need to move, or at least have some grand adventures, so that I'd have material.

I'd grown up in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. Nothing all that exciting had happened to me.

I know now that writing doesn't come only from experience. It comes from

empathy and imagination. You don't need to be someplace new to see or hear or taste or smell or

feel something new. That can happen right in your own backyard. Part of what I need to do to make a

familiar place interesting is to never let it be the same place to me. That means trying to notice

things I didn't notice the day before.

Today's poem feels like a wish you were here postcard.

It makes me wonder how I would describe where I live to someone far away,

what details I would include, what in my familiar world might woo them to join me here.

Things I Want to Tell You About California by Barbara Costas Biggs.

I know you're tired of hearing about it, the perfect weather, how I stood on a five-gallon bucket to reach oranges hanging over the fence from the neighbor's tree, the meal I made with food from the

farmer's market, even the mushrooms they call my taki, hen of the woods where you grew up, growing at the base of trees,

probably in the gully behind your parents' home. I know I can't make you love the things that I do,

but can't you see there is a river here? It runs through the town. A bridge arches over it.

...