1561: So Much Space for Song by James Crews
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
American Public Media
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Today’s poem is So Much Space for Song by James Crews.
Sharing poetry is a two-way street. So today, you'll be hearing a poem selected by one of our listeners. Today’s selection was submitted by Rekha from Washington, D.C.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Rekha reflects… “Today's poem shows us that we are part of nature. We always tend to think of birds and animals and insects sort of as nature abstracted, but they're just like us.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Micah Keelbon, and this is The Slowdown. |
| 0:19.4 | Sharing poetry is a two-way street. |
| 0:22.8 | So today, you'll be hearing a poem selected by one of our listeners. |
| 0:27.7 | Enjoy. |
| 0:28.7 | My name is Ray Kalmera, and I live in Washington, D.C. |
| 0:33.0 | By profession, I'm actually an agricultural economist who worked on international development issues |
| 0:38.8 | related to improving the economic lives, just generally the lives of low-income women. |
| 0:45.4 | I like to think that I live my life in such a way that I somehow bring more to other people's |
| 0:52.7 | lives as well. I mean, I feel like that's sort of been my career. |
| 0:57.5 | And I think, too, that just in my family as well, having my family and bringing up my |
| 1:04.4 | children, and I'm making the world livable and enjoyable for them as well. |
| 1:09.6 | Or even if you're talking about children, in a way, |
| 1:14.1 | making them see the world so that they can enjoy it. So I had a lovely walk. It was a beautiful day. |
| 1:21.0 | There is a standard route that I take now, which is to the capital and back. It's an interesting street. I mean, besides |
| 1:28.8 | looking at flowers and listening to the birds and so on, there's also the National Guard |
| 1:35.8 | that's walking around these days. And then it's always interesting to see, you know, all the |
| 1:41.1 | people, especially in the summertime, and then where they congregate |
| 1:46.0 | and for what purpose is, because around the Capitol or the Supreme Court, there's always |
| 1:51.2 | some kind of protest going on when you have to kind of worry about dodging where you walk freely |
| 1:57.7 | every day, might be closed off. It's always, it's always interesting. |
| 2:03.1 | Even more interesting when it's, when nobody's around |
| 2:06.5 | and you can just walk wherever you feel like. |
... |
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