Hey there, it's Major.

Today's episode of The Slowdown is guests hosted by the poet and writer Maggie Smith.

I'll be back on Monday, February 17th.

I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

I'm someone who wants to know the names of things.

I want to know what kind of tree has that bark that peels like strips of paper,

what those stripy rows of clouds are called,

what bird is making that nearly mechanical sound.

The answers, I can tell you from research,

are paper birch, undelatus, and European starlings.

When I'm on a walk, I take pictures and make recordings so I can later identify what I've seen and heard.

If my teenage daughter is with me, as she often is, she teases me when I use the birding app on my phone, or when I take photos of seed pods or leaves or bark, so I can identify a plant or a tree.

She said once, why can't you just see it and enjoy it? Why do you need to know its name?

What can I say? I'm relentlessly curious. But I also think that it's a way of respecting the

natural world. When we care about people, we care enough to call them by their names, to pronounce those names correctly, and to use their correct pronouns.

Why not treat birds, trees, and clouds with the same respect?

I can imagine my daughter rolling her eyes at that idea.

You're such a poet, she might say, and we'd laugh.

I believe there is power in naming.

Today's poem engages with this idea,

and it does something else I admire.

It grapples.

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