April is celebrated as both poetry month and as earth month. This week in honor of the

earth and the language we use to describe and understand it, the slowdown is collaborating

with wonder media networks as she rises, now in its second season. It brings together

poems from artists throughout the U.S. and territories that depict the effect of climate

change on their home and their people, centering native voices and women of color as she rises,

personalizes the elusive magnitude of climate change. Today's poem is by one of the poets

featured on as she rises.

I'm Adeli Mone and this is the slowdown.

Right after I graduated college, I worked as a receptionist for the King County Water and Land

Resources Division. How can I help you in Washington State? I was a receptionist of over 300

county employees. We handled everything from stormwater resources to river and flood management.

I loved that job. Truly, sometimes I think it was the only job I was ever really good at.

I could answer phones and transfer to someone that could help.

I got to talk about when the salmon were spawning and watched as environmental specialist

would head out into the field to handle some sort of water crisis. Before that, I wasn't really

sure what a watershed was to be honest, but that job taught me how everything to do with water

is connected. I know at 21 I should have already known this, but up until then I hadn't

realized that everything that goes down into a storm drain makes its way to the ocean.

This seemed unfathomable and terrifying, terrifying because I saw what went down the storm drains

in the center of the city of Seattle where it rains on average 149 days of the year.

But it also made me have a different relationship with water. I'm sure no one from that job

would remember me now, but they taught me so much when it came to wildlife habitats, the importance

...