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. It brings together poems from artists throughout

the US 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 Ashi

Ritesus.

I'm Italy Mone and this is the slowdown.

I have been obsessed with cycles lately with the idea of what returns to us. I feel the

relief of seasons coming again often just as I've decided to give up on whatever season

I've been so stuck in. But I'm also obsessed with cycles in the body, cycles in the mind.

I for one go through a cycle of silence when I don't want to speak to anyone when I crave

aloneness and smallness. I think the human animal is just as affected by cycles as the

non-human animal, though we may not always admit it. We like to believe we are in control

that we are the masters of our fate. But then here comes gravity, here comes mortality,

here comes the earth, the sun, the stars, and everything that's so much larger than our

little tender human bodies wandering the planet in our strange outfits made out of fabrics

and plastics. The cycles, whether we like it or not, are way more in charge than we are.

And actually, I like the idea of something bigger than me and my worries, making things

spin. Today's poem explores the idea of cycles and the extraordinary power of the earth

that we all belong to.

Cycle, bi Alexis, Pauline, Gums. What the star said to the earth? Sometimes I wish I was like you,

...