I'm Adely Mones and this is The Slowdown.

I've been thinking a lot about what saves us.

I mean that in a real way.

That saves us from our own pessimistic desire to give up.

And I keep coming up with not joy, nor pleasure, but wonder, wonder at all.

Wonder is what keeps saving me.

And right now it's the wonder of poems.

Today's poem finds triumph in both its clear eye look at our broken world and the wonder

that holds us here.

All I know by Paul Gast.

The statue of Liberty was packed in crates of lentils and there is a species of catfish

with scales so tough that piranhas can't chew through to red softness.

I'm thinking of what is vital today.

The willow tree in my dreams that sways and a little girl singing quiet approximations

of hymns.

To the night, to the flames which are tragic and kinetic and aren't ever receding.

I was the other day looking out over what I believe is a river, forgive me, for not knowing

the vague taxonomies of water.

And it was all noise, which is good for some who struggle to sleep or forget or change

or learn or have any time that isn't quilted by pain.

I was attempting to memorize the wet folds going by, imagining the smoothness of rock

that was hidden beneath it all and composing another version of this poem, one which has

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