Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

On May 24, an 18-year-old shot and killed 19 children and two teachers in a fourth grade class in Uvalde, Texas. Twenty-one lives taken and it seems too much to write about, talk about. Even talking about grief feels too hard. There are moments when language fails and this is one of them.

The children in my life are already going through so much. They are dealing with the pandemic, the worsening climate crisis, a storm of various anxieties, a country divided and turning in on itself, and on top of all of that they are subjected to lockdown drills in their classrooms and being raised amid the fear of what could happen at any moment in the United States. The apparent “land of the free.”

I always try to turn toward the light a little bit in these episodes, I believe in the power of hope. I don’t believe in giving up. I think giving up is when things get much worse. I think about the Toni Morrison quote, “I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.”

Today’s poem does not ignore the pain. Rather, it faces it. I love this poem for the way it bravely explores how we are handing our children a broken world.

Poem for My Children Born During the Sixth Extinction
by Laura Cresté

The first things kids learn in school are the seasons.
By now they already know their colors, maybe even their last names.
My children will learn hurricane and wildfire. It is summer and then it is winter.

They won’t know the sweet weeks of early June, honeysuckle,
wearing a sundress without sweat pooling behind a knee.
Maybe even a little cold at night.

They might not know bumblebees, not personally.
Polar bears they’ll read about like dinosaurs.
We’ll still have the old-fashioned disasters, a broken elbow, split lip.

I’ll try not to scare them, but when I see them eating unwashed grapes
I’ll tell them about pesticides. One will forget but the other won’t eat fruit for years.
When they ask if I believe in heaven I will lie.

When they’re little I want them to feel safe.
When they’re older I want them to believe their bones
will lie dumb in the earth forever. This is your one life.

They’ll want to know what their parents did before they were born
We had dinner parties. Traveled a little, not enough.
Read our friends’ books. Had a dog they won’t remember

but will pretend to, and too many plants.
Water-damaged the windowsill and lost our deposit.
When our spider plant mothered into twelve stalks, we potted them,

called them spiderettes. They were supposed to be housewarming
gifts, but we didn’t know twelve people moving. We tried
not using too much plastic, not eating too much meat. It didn’t matter.

We knew our children’s lives would get worse every year.
We thought they might like to be here anyway,
to give them oceans, ice cream, optic nerves, the flowers, and all their names.

"Poem for My Children Born During the Sixth Extinction" by Laura Cresté. Used by permission of the poet.