One summer’s evening, when a woman was sitting
with friends at a table in a fine establishment,
her daughter announced it was the one hundredth
anniversary of Winnie-the-Pooh. “Well, Hallo,”
said the woman, as she remembered how oftenishly
she and her son would play a game in which
they would guess at what character a person would be
if they lived in the Hundred Acre Wood, so,
scratching her ear in shy sort of way,
she suggested they play such a game.
One woman at the table, being a good adventurer
and liking to stay at the edge of the action,
knew at once she would be Christopher Robin.
Another was mostly Tigger with a dusting of Eeyore
and a share of Piglet-ish nervousness. And the woman,
who had long known she was part Tigger and part Rabbit,
seeing as how she was both exuberant and rather fond
of control, was not keen to discover that perhaps
she was also a bit of Owl, somewhat of a know it all
who is most likely wrong, especially, as it turns out,
about which character her daughter might pick
for herself, which made it Awkward when the woman’s
inner Rabbit took notes and scoffed, and her inner Owl
went on believing it knew best. But her inner
Friendly Tigger soon felt Bouncy and Boffish again,
just enjoying the night. “Perhaps we all have a bit
of all the characters in us,” one woman suggested.
Such a Pooh thing to say. And the evening went on quite right.
Posts Tagged ‘control’
In Which The Woman Telling the Story Discovers Something of Who She Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged community, control, exuberance, identity, Winnie-the-Pooh on August 21, 2026| 15 Comments »
What the Heart Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, car, control, grief, safety on May 11, 2026| 51 Comments »
In every moment, there is a car
and an infinite hill and the chance
you will roll down that hill. With no brakes.
Backwards. When grief first yanked me
into its old beater, I was too stunned
to try to stop gravity from doing what
gravity does. Mostly, these days,
I forget what can happen. Mostly,
there’s a rope attached to the car
that keeps it from careening, a rope
made of friendship, of family,
of trust in the self that has grown over time.
The rope is a lovely illusion.
Sometimes I fool myself into believing
that the stability I feel is because
the brakes are fixed and I’ve become
better at parking, even in the steepest zones.
I fool myself into thinking the rope can’t be cut.
That is why, perhaps, it’s so surprising
when I feel the lurch, my stomach rising
into my chest. So surprising to see loss
is sitting in the driver’s seat looking
at me with its uncompromising gaze
as if to say, No, sweetheart,
that seatbelt won’t do you any good.
If you pray, now’s a good time for that—
but don’t bother to pray for the car
to stop. Pray to be able to laugh
as we speed down the hill.
Pray that as the world blurs by,
while terror squeezes your throat
what is most alive in you also notices
how radiant the sunset, how briefly
it shines, that tender pink.
Beyond Sight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, dream, god, hand, surrender, trust on August 26, 2024| 5 Comments »
All around me, the world
was normal—people eating dinner
or walking down the street—
but my world?
Some massive, invisible hand
kept capturing me, then
tossing me into the air.
And I’d somersault
and fall and be caught,
then placed upright again
on the ground. All night
it went on like this.
I’d be walking and then
I’d be flying and then
I’d be falling and then
I’d be caught, until finally,
by morning, we couldn’t say
that it wasn’t disconcerting,
but we could say I
had become more fluent
in this strange upheaval.
We could say I
had begun to trust
the same hand that tossed me
would catch me.
We could say that when
I woke up, I was still myself
and nothing felt the same.
And though my feet
never left the ground today,
I was tossed.
And then I was caught.
Even now, I almost feel them
around my chest,
those great fingers
as they set me on my feet again.
Amazing Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, grace, grief, will on January 15, 2024| 13 Comments »
At what point in the avalanche
do we realize there’s nothing
to be done but be pummeled
and tumbled and broken
by the world?
At what point do we know
that no matter how hard we swim,
the current will carry
us over the falls and
to the rocks below?
At what point are we sure
we can’t save our beloveds,
not from the world and not
from themselves?
In that moment,
and perhaps only then,
grace comes in to do
what the will cannot,
and whatever it is
that is larger than us
makes a home in us.
If we survive it,
sometimes it stays.
After the First Snow Storm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, belief, control, snow, understanding on October 24, 2022| 5 Comments »
Just when I believed
autumn would last forever
it didn’t.
Not that I really thought
the gold leaves would stay.
Not that I really believed
the warm days were endless—
but part of me wanted them to be.
And so this cold morning,
driving on ice
when I feel the slip of the wheels
as they lose traction,
the heart resonates
with the skid.
Oh, this lesson
in losing control.
Oh, this remembering
how quickly it all slides by—
the light, the warmth,
the deepening gold,
even this fleeting understanding
of how quickly
it all slides by.
With the Stars All Around
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, control, dream, letting go, life, sleep, trust on August 4, 2021| 5 Comments »
I wish you the peace of sleep,
your breath a canoe
that carries you
toward the next moment
without any need
for you to touch the oars.
How easily you arrive.
Oh, to trust the world like that—
trust you will be carried,
not just in sleep,
but in waking dreams,
trust no matter how high the waves,
the skiff of grace
has a seat for you.
And oh, to let go of the oars—
there is no steering
toward what comes next.
How Could I Have Just Now Noticed?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, control, poem, poetry on May 17, 2015| 3 Comments »
no wonder my feet
never reach the brakes—
all this time
trying to drive
from the passenger side
The Daughter of the Biologist Supposes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biologist, control, daughter, father, pain, poem, poetry on June 17, 2013| 5 Comments »
In the dirt crawl space
under the yellow house
my brother and I
would play among dad’s jars—
dozens of jars
filled with clear greenish liquid,
all of them holding
dead white fish,
their colors
long since faded.
Every black-capped container
was labeled with typewritten
lettering, but we could not yet read.
Mostly we stared
at their clouded scales,
their pale fins,
their useless eyes.
We did not question
why they were there,
stacked beside the winter coats
and boxes of dishes we seldom used.
Dad finally threw them away
when we moved,
though he did not want to let them go.
He cared about those fish in jars.
Not the bodies themselves,
I suppose. Perhaps
because he had been
so alive with the catching
and naming of them.
Perhaps because
there are so many things
that cannot be caught
nor labeled nor set aside.
Like the pain that
even then was beginning
to reach for his joints, grabbing
his shoulders, hips and knees.
Like his father’s anger
that he always carried—
something pale, many scaled,
something vital that died.
And Still Some Part of Me Reaches for a Legend, a Ruler, a Fact
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, ego, knowing, not knowing, poem, poetry, spirit, surrender on May 17, 2012| 6 Comments »
You can’t solve being human. We will have this affliction till the day we die.
—Jeannie Zandi
I tried to know it,
catch it, show it,
to splay its wings
and pin them—
to chart it, graph it,
plot it, map it,
quantify and reckon,
I tried to stuff it,
box it, pack it,
leash it to a pole,
I wanted answers,
wanted keys,
I wanted oracles,
and in came tamarisk,
rodents, dust,
whole rooms
of I don’t know,
a screaming child,
my milk dried up,
my fear devoured me whole.
Splintered, rumpled,
rankled, crumpled,
my all collapsed,
unplastered.
Undone, released,
exposed, relieved,
I flowered
utterly mastered.