833: The Railroad Worm

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

American Public Media

Arts, Performing Arts

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2023

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem is The Railroad Worm by Kimiko Hahn. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “Night can be cozy or night can be sexy, and night is always spiked with a little bit of danger. Night has always felt full of possibility to me. In college, I loved coming back to the dormitories at night, seeing the lights on in my friends’ windows. We humans are fascinated by anything that illuminates the darkness. We love the moon, and we love the stars. We love lightning bugs, and glow sticks, and I might know a little something about neon body paint under the black lights of the dance floor.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's episode is guest-hosted by the poet Jason Schneiderman.
0:06.2	Don't worry, I'll be back in your feeds on March 27th.
0:16.5	I'm Jason Schneiderman, and this is The Slowdown.
0:31.0	I love winter.
0:33.0	I like the coziness of bundling up in thick sweaters
0:36.0	and putting heavy blankets on the bed.
0:39.0	I like the short days in the long nights,
0:42.0	the hot cocoa and the hot toddies,
0:44.0	the coming inside from a freezing street to a warm home.
0:48.0	I have spent winter in St. Petersburg
0:51.0	where they never shovel the sidewalks
0:53.0	and in Provincetown where almost everything is deserted.
0:57.0	And I love snow most of all,
0:59.0	the magic of those flakes falling from the sky.
1:03.0	Once in Siberia, I was in a snow
1:06.0	that was so cold I could see the shape of the crystals
1:09.0	with my naked eye.
1:11.0	And I realized that those snowflakes
1:13.0	you cut out of white paper in elementary school
1:16.0	are real, not just at a microscopic level,
1:20.0	but falling from the sky.
1:24.0	I also love night.
	...

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