I'm Adalino and this is the Slowdown.

One of the things I love about riding poetry is that sometimes you don't know what it is

you're searching for.

What it is you want to explore, but the poem knows.

The poem is smarter than the poet.

You might begin with one word and then suddenly the poem transforms and opens and dares what

you were feeling, what was circling in you all that time without you even knowing it.

I suppose what I mean is I love how poems reveal us to us.

Once I wrote a poem about my bird feeder, surprise, surprise, I know.

And of course it began with a feeder and then it moved and moved until it wasn't about

the feeder at all, but about naming our pain, recognizing when something wasn't love

but suffering.

That is not at all what I had intended to write about, but clearly that was what was occupying

my mind.

And I wouldn't have known that if the poem were by word or bird by bird hadn't unraveled

it for me.

For me, that's why not just reading poetry, but also riding poetry can be so powerful.

It can help us name our wounds and in doing so, help us begin to heal them or fight our

way forward or transform into something even stronger.

Today's poem is a perfect example of starting a poem in one place and ending it in another

unexpected place.

I admire how this poem reveals a truth and a desire that pulsates under each stanza.

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