Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

Every Thursday when I take out the trash, I think about how I quantify the value of my life. Every laundry day. Every time I check the mail. It feels like this is how I know time has passed, we roll out the recycling, we mow the lawn, we watch as the seasons change. The day is broken up into the hours in which I feed the dog. Morning, noon, and evenings. Yes, she gets lunch. I give myself lunch, so the dog gets lunch too.

I can find a steady rhythm in the needs of another being, something sustainable and something I can count on. I walk the dog around the neighborhood and even she has her routines. She stops at the neighbor's peony and tries to pee on it before we gently guide her further along and my husband makes the joke that the peony should be called a “pee on me”...and this is how time passes. At night, there’s the glow of the TV screen, some books moved back upstairs to the office to keep surfaces clean and clear.

There is safety and security in these routines. I can find myself counting on them. And yet, I also don’t want to get lost in them, or rather, I want to be sure I am doing them with intention, noticing the walk, the dog, the peony, my husband’s good company. I’m sometimes scared that the whole routine of life might swallow me whole.

For example, I fold the blanket that we keep on the couch every night before I go to bed. You could even say my life is just folding and unfolding the blanket. A woman in a living room window folding and unfolding the blanket. Even as the mind wanders, the world careens from one awful tragedy to another, there I’ll be folding and unfolding the blanket until one day when I’m not.

Today’s poem speaks to how we track our days and how easy it is to get lost in the day’s rigamarole. I love this poem for how it begins with the ordinary and expands to the urgent need to be reminded of one’s own existence.

Bruised Peaches
by Bronwen Tate

We measure days in peaches, bruises, livid, lose the keys,
Find them days later in the dirty laundry. What is habit
That it wakes me up to effort? I cook but don’t dust, read
In bed, wash the sheets occasionally. Eat the peaches
Before they mold, wear wool socks against a cold July.
My signature slants “O” to a recognizable angle—what is
Unnoticed is unchanging; the B negative of my blood, unchecked,
Will reject babies that could have poisoned me in another age.
Might effort tilt the ratios of my articles, definite stamp of
All I’ve heard and hardened indefinite in what I make. A child is
Variable flung from the cells, being, substance-sewn
Self. In coming hours, a turn, determined angle, harkening,
Effortless. Biology wakes me to that cry. Subterranean
Singing through the fabric, thin-spread-thing, I am still here.

"Bruised Peaches" by Bronwen Tate, from THE SILK THE MOTHS IGNORE copyright © 2021 Bronwen Tate. Used by permission of the poet.