Hi, it's Slowdown producer Micah Kielbon.

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.

We weren't able to get this community curator on the phone to chat,

but this poem speaks volumes to our team.

Even since last year, quite a few babies have been born into my world,

across family, friends, and work.

Each one of them is a life-changing joy,

and a little person who makes tangible the utter mystery of our existences.

This poem explores that mystery.

I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

At a party, one friend was bothered by another asking guests if they wanted to hold her three-month-old baby. We were a large group gathered in the backyard for a graduation celebration.

My bothered friends mixed feelings about bringing a human being into an unstable world,

colored her experiences with newborns.

Yet, what I saw in the mother was someone beset in the wake of this imponderable wonder.

She wanted us to feel what she felt, awe, and looking into her baby's

eyes, to hold close to our bodies its sweet innocence. Raising a child is a hugely personal

decision. When my adult son announced casually in our kitchen, he planned to live his life child-free,

I found myself hoping that he would reconsider his decision, not because I possess a hidden desire to continue a bloodline,

but because parenting provided me so much joy and purpose. But then I realized, his life, his call. I abandoned my foolish thought and reasoned he

would experience his own brand of happiness and whatever shape it took.

...