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

In 1993, the poet Carolyn Forschae edited an anthology called Against Forgetting, 20th century poetry of witness.

It's not a light read by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an important one.

The poems in the collection call attention to some of human history's worst moments.

Poets wrote as they endured imprisonment, fought in wars, or awaited execution.

We need this kind of witnessing.

We need witnesses to remind us of our fraught past,

which informs our present.

We need these poems as testaments to human endurance.

But there are other kinds of witnessing we need too,

and one of those is witnessing the natural world.

The planet we call home is full of wonders,

and it's also changing, in large part because of our impact on the environment.

It's up to us to protect and conserve what we can, but also to witness and document the world as it is,

to pay attention to the trees and rivers,

to the fields and mountains,

and to all of the living creatures that still live alongside us.

Poetry can do this work. The planet we call home is full of miracles, and we don't have to look hard

to find them. Just on my walk yesterday, I saw an albino squirrel, some beautiful sycamore trees, and several different

types of clouds in a single sky.

Last night, when letting the dog out into the backyard, I smiled to see Orion's belt and the big dipper right over my house.

Today's poem is about paying attention to the beauty around us and to the life around us,

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