Hi, it's Slowdown producer Micah Kielban.

Last year, we asked our community of listeners to help us curate poems we share on the show,

to submit poems that have helped you pause and reflect in this busy world.

This was one of our favorite weeks of episodes,

and we wanted to return to them as we revisit episodes from the archives between seasons.

Here's one of our community curators to tell you

why they want you to hear this poem. I'm Doug Green. I just came off a one-year stint with my

spouse, Becky Bowling, as the co-poet Laureate of Northfield, Minnesota. It's a poem that it just

speaks to me in so many different ways. It's a poem that it just speaks to me in so many different ways.

It's a topic about loss and losing that I think speaks to everyone.

And its tone is marvelous.

And yet there's a kind of deeper truth underneath it

about the way that little things sometimes become magnified,

and then also there really are big losses, right? I mean, everybody faces those.

I think it's comforting in a peculiar way that when you're struggling with something,

when you're struggling with losses, it helps to hear someone

else's voice. I think that's why I would offer it to someone.

I'm Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

Somewhere in the universe is a shipping container of Major's lost books, umbrellas, scarves, hats, eyewear, jackets,

notebooks, pens, phones, and the list goes on. Thus is the nature of my hurried existence

and drifting attention. I even lose the big items. On several occasions, flight attendants ran after me and breathlessly handed over laptops retrieved from seat pockets. Big smirks on their faces.

Movie theaters are dangerous. Plains are dangerous. Car rental return lanes are also dangerous. These are

...