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

I'm a poet and a mother.

I spend most of my time writing and parenting my two kids who are now teenagers.

You might think that as a poet, I must have read a lot of poetry to my children when they were younger. You might think that I encouraged them to

write poems of their own because it's such a big part of my own life. The truth is, I didn't read

a lot of poetry to my kids, and I didn't expect them to want to write it themselves.

As a mom, I know this to be true. If I want my kids to hate something, I should make it

really important to me that they like it. I didn't want to be overbearing and try to make my thing their thing.

I've always talked about poetry with my kids, or at least the building blocks of poetry,

the way chefs probably talk to their kids about food.

Instilling a love of poetry in my children started before they could read, and it actually didn't start with poems at all. It started with play,

low stakes, no pressure. I wanted to encourage them to use their imaginations and express themselves.

I wanted them to think like poets and to see the world around them in a poetic way. So even when my kids

were small, I would encourage them to play with figurative language.

On our walks and errands, I'd ask questions like, what does that rainbow remind you of?

What sound would the sun make if it could make a sound? What does that orchid look like to you? When a poet or a child

plays with figurative language, they explore the possibilities and the boundaries of the words we use

to describe the world around us. Life will throw at us things that are hard or impossible

to describe both beautiful and awful things. So I think that kind of play isn't just a writing tool.

It's a life skill. Today's poem is a perfect poem for late winter,

when we are anticipating the beginning of spring, and it's a poem that employs metaphor in

surprising ways. For context, the title, Apocatasticis, is a theological term that refers to the restoration

...