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 ‘identity’
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 »
Give Up Rosemerry, He Wrote in His Letter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, letting go, surrender on January 4, 2026| Leave a Comment »
with thanks to Zhim
In fact, he didn’t write my name.
In fact, he wrote his own.
Inserting my own name came naturally.
Give up Rosemerry.
How thrilling the sentence became.
“A balancing counterweight,” he wrote,
“for a being who has extreme passion.”
The words swirl in me like a storm.
On a day when the news is of conquering,
this simple direction toward surrender.
I become a student of snow.
Give up Rosemerry. Give up.
What beauty arrives as I let go?
Inner Girl
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, identity, nickname on July 6, 2025| 9 Comments »
I don’t know why he started calling me Roxanne,
but sometime in high school that’s what Dad did.
No matter it wasn’t my name. I loved how it made
me feel—something just ours. Dad had a way
of doing that—making a person feel seen, feel
uniquely known to him. And so today,
on his birthday, I imagined Dad could see me
through the veils of death. I talked to him as usual
as I weeded the garden bed. Told him about
the four river otter that showed up in the pond today,
how they slid their dark slick bodies across the top
of the water and dined on crawdads for hours.
As always, Dad didn’t talk back. Then, tonight,
at a party, when a woman introduced herself
as Roxanne, I stared at her, stunned, then unraveled
into tears. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it’s strange
to have a person start to weep when you tell
them your name.” She was kind to me all
the same. Just hearing someone say the word
I understood how much I miss hearing him
say it, miss the person I am with him.
It’s as if a door has been locked for years—
the door through which I am Roxanne.
Someone silly. Treasured. Supported. Known.
Hearing the name again felt like a key,
a gift on his birthday. It didn’t bring him back,
but it revived a forgotten part of me.
Even now, she is writing this poem.
Sitting Beside the Meyer Lemon Tree with Sherry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, identity, legacy effect on April 28, 2025| 8 Comments »
I wasn’t thinking about the roots.
I was thinking of the intensely sweet
perfume, both heavy and bright
in the cool spring air.
I was thinking how much scent
comes from such small creamy flowers,
and how I wanted to save this floral
fragrance like a portal for remembering Sherry
in her black and white boots,
her red poppy necklace, her red spectacles,
and the conversation we had earlier
about what she called “The Legacy Effect”
in which we honor how events
and actions from long ago
still affect who we are today—
like the way she longs to find
the woman from college
who scrunched down her ankle socks
instead of folding them neatly down.
Sherry wants to write her a thank you letter
for changing the way she saw the world—
starting with her socks!
Enamored as I was with the lemon tree scent,
only later did it occur to me to thank not just
the flowers but the roots—shallow and fibrous.
How many roots are inside each of us,
spreading way beyond our own canopy?
How long would the thank you list be
if we named everyone and everything
that made us who we are? How invisible
and essential. Our perfume is their legacy.
One Side Effect
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity on July 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »
scrubbing off my worry,
my name
washed off, too
In Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, conversation, identity, language, love, words on January 25, 2024| 12 Comments »
The sound of your voice
enters me and becomes me—
becomes synapse, becomes pulse,
becomes blood, becomes breath.
And in this way, the more I listen to you,
the more I become you.
It is no small thing to converse.
Sometimes I swim in the wild honey
of your words. Sometimes I break
on their jagged shores.
Some words become pillars that hold up
what is possible.
Others are wrecking balls
that turn to rubble all I thought I knew.
How fleeting it is, any grasp
of who we are. This is why,
hour after month after year
I welcome your words—
I like what they do.
Even when they are not easy to hear,
I love who I become
when I listen to you.
Skiing in the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged darkness, identity, skiing on January 13, 2024| 8 Comments »
Though you know by heart
this valley with its river,
its sheer red walls,
its ragged peaks,
in this moment all you see
is the dull glow of snow
a few feet in front of you
and dim shadows almost
suggesting the track,
and the whole world shrinks
to lungs and legs and stroke
and glide and it feels so good
to be outside, to move
through night guided more
by ears and less by eyes,
to slide through the world
a foot at a time and whoever
you were before this,
that’s not who you are now,
sweet creature of heartbeat,
stranger to the next moment.
Identity Check
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, dream, identity on June 6, 2021| 2 Comments »
When they asked
for my identity card
I looked in my purse
and found someone else’s.
And someone else’s.
And someone else’s.
But not mine.
But it’s me, I said.
I turned to my friends
so they could vouch for me,
but their word was not enough
to prove I was myself.
When I woke,
I leaned deeper
into my being, my breath
giving me what no card,
no word could do.
Even the flesh is a trick.
Oh, how the morning shines.
Dear America,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged America, American Flag, community, election, identity, United States of America on November 6, 2020| 8 Comments »
I am your daughter.
I have marched in your main street parades,
and in my yard I fly your flag.
I pledge allegiance and sing your anthem.
My uncle and grandfather fought in your wars.
My other grandfather came to your shores
as a young boy and stayed to raise your powerlines.
I climb your mountains and work your soil
and pick up trash on your highways.
I love you, America.
I vote in your polls and raise your children
and volunteer in your schools.
And because you are America,
I pay your taxes and call my senators
and protest in your streets.
I read your poets, relearn your history,
travel your back roads and cheer your teams.
You made me, America.
And I pray for you. And I pray in the way I choose to pray
because we can do that in America.
America, did we forget
our differences are what make us great?
Remember, America, the dream!
The wind is fierce today,
and I love the way it inspires the flag to wave into life.
Whatever is fierce around us is an invitation
to show up. Whatever is difficult
is a call to bring our best.
Whatever is uncertain is a chance
to be clearer in our thoughts, more generous in our speech.
America, it’s not a president
that makes our country great—
it’s us. How we treat each other.
How we meet our mistakes.
How we become the wind that raises the flag.
How our own hearts must be the home of the brave.
One More Layer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, identity, losing the self on June 5, 2020| 4 Comments »
the more I wear this story
of myself, the more
it grows thin, ravels,
a sweater filled with holes—
I fall through them
Other Shoes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, friendship, healing, identity on May 5, 2020| 8 Comments »
We all belong to the same galactic oneness.
—Carlos Santana, Master Class
I could be the doctor who, overwhelmed
in the ER, went home and killed herself.
I could be the sixteen-year-old boy
who had to cover his father with a white sheet
before the coroner arrived.
I could be the white sheet.
I could be the lawmaker unable to sleep,
or her pillow that hears her cry out in fear
when at last the sleep arrives.
I could be the rhythmic hissing of the ventilator
or the wail of the wife, or the weary hum
of the custodian beneath her mask
as she wipes the surfaces clean.
It could be me, the eleventh death
in the town next door to mine.
It could be me, the one who
unknowingly makes you sick
because I don’t know I carry
something deadly inside my breath.
And so I don’t hug you when I see you
across the post office lobby,
though my heart leaps up to hold you.
Because you could be the flat line
on the EKG.
Because you could be number twelve.
Losing It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, loss, poem, poetry, self on August 25, 2018| 4 Comments »
It was a tiny percentage, I knew, but still
there was some French royalty somewhere
in my blood. I would spend hours imagining
myself in my proper place: in a long pink dress
and thin gold crown in a castle on a green hillside,
doing needlepoint, no doubt, and nibbling bon bons,
and so when I again asked my mother to tell me about
that part of our heritage, she told me,
It’s so little blood, and you’ve had so many
skinned knees, I’m pretty sure you’ve
bled it all out by now. And I was instantly
less grandiose. That was, perhaps, the first identity
that I was aware of losing. But soon after that,
I was no longer blonde. And soon after that,
I no longer lived in Wisconsin. And soon after that,
I was no longer a Scout. Everything I thought
I knew about myself didn’t last. Ah,
the litany of losses. Those notions of who we are,
how they shed, they spill, they slip off.
As they’re lost, we usually rush to replace them.
I became worker. Lover. Parent. Friend.
We wear them so close, these identities ,
that we no longer see them as separate. We think
they’re who we are. But what if we skinned
not just our knees, but our thoughts,
and let those roles escape? Who would
be left to walk through the field this evening
to see the double rainbow stretched across the east?
Where We Are Headed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, flowers, identity, naming, poem, poetry on October 18, 2017| 3 Comments »
I resist any kind of discourse that anchors itself in identity and proceeds from there. As I said before, I want to get behind categorical distinctions and find and work with what human beings share and how, potentially, people can coexist in a world that is extraordinarily diverse.
—Michael D. Jackson, “The Politics of Storytelling” in the Harvard Divinity School News
At first we just say flower. How
thrilling it is to name. Then it’s
aster. Begonia. Chrysanthemum.
We spend our childhood learning
to separate one thing from another.
Daffodil. Edelweiss. Fern. We learn
which have five petals, which have six.
We say, “This is a gladiolus, this hyacinth.”
And we fracture the world into separate
identities. Iris. Jasmine. Lavender.
Divorcing the world into singular bits.
And then, when we know how to tell
one thing from another, perhaps
at last we feel the tug to see not
what makes things different, but
what makes things the same. Perhaps
we feel the pleasure that comes
when we start to blur the lines—
and once again everything
is flower, and by everything,
I mean everything.
Just After I Told Someone I Felt Quite Fine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, mask, poem, poetry, release on June 30, 2015| 1 Comment »
I had worn it so long, that mask,
I didn’t notice it no longer fit.
In fact, I didn’t notice I wore it at all.
Every day I woke up wearing the mask.
I wore it all day, then returned to bed wearing
the mask. I don’t even remember putting it on,
what, was it as a child? Slowly, we come
to take habit as truth. Besides, on the outside,
it was pretty enough. Placid and happy.
It was only today I noticed how on the inside,
the mask had hair of snakes, how I was being
surely turned to stone. I did not want
to break the mask. I did not know
what the face beneath it might be.
I was afraid to not like what I saw.
There is a call to be ruthless, our hands
rising to do what must be done,
though some voice we thought
was our own shouts at us to stop.
And there is another voice. Perhaps
you’ve heard it, too. I notice
it’s easier to hear it when the mask
isn’t covering my ears. It’s strange
today to walk down the street.
I don’t know what I might say.
I don’t know what I might do.
Waking Up Grateful
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, ownership, poem, poetry, woman on February 16, 2015| 3 Comments »
You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one
—Philip Levine, “Our Valley”
I am not your land. Not your woman, either.
Not your girl, not your scapegoat, not your Juliet.
I can’t be mapped, can’t be trapped, can’t be pinned.
Can’t be bought, can’t be caught, can’t be won.
But here I am, open handed, and here
you are. I don’t know this valley,
though I’ve walked it many times.
Let’s learn it again together. This time on our knees.
And Meanwhile There’s Something Simply There
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged essence, identity, moon, poem, poetry, self on February 3, 2015| 4 Comments »
While the moon watcher stands
out on the porch in her towel
and stares at the almost full moon,
the practical one starts to fuss
about how she’ll catch cold with wet hair,
and the list maker is already thinking
of all the things to be done
when she gets back inside,
“Like go check on your kids
to be sure they’re asleep,” says the mother,
and that’s when the laid-back one says,
“Oh relax, they’re fine, drink some wine,”
and the optimist notes what a sparkling
night it is, how the snow in the field
has never, ever been so luminous,
and the pleaser agrees with her
and says, “Never, ever so luminous,
you’re so right, oh it’s beautiful out here,”
at which the budding wise ass says,
“You’ve seen one moon, you’ve seen ’em all,”
and moon watcher almost sticks out her tongue,
but that is not like her, not like her at all,
and she marvels at the impulse, how it seemed
to rise out of nowhere, just like that gorgeous
enormous shining orb. “Oh yes,” says the scientist,
“Did you know that the moon’s surface
has exceptionally low albedo, giving it a reflectance
only slightly brighter than that of worn asphalt,”
and that’s when the reporter jumps in and begins
to take notes. And the little girl says, “There’s a bunny
in there, do you see it, do you see it tilting on its side,”
and the lover, feeling lonely, wishes she had someone
with her to watch the shining moon as it slides
all the way across the visible sky, the moon somehow
oblivious to all that company it’s keeping
on this luminous, cold night.
What Matters
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, identity, poem, poetry on January 29, 2015| 3 Comments »
in empty branches
the red-wing blackbirds
chirrup and trill—
is she a woman who is listening to them
if so, she has, for now at least, forgotten
Perhaps It’s What You Are Thinking, But …
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, daughter, identity, poem, poetry, woman on December 4, 2014| 2 Comments »
Do not say she is beautiful.
Say she is the engine, the fuel,
the rubber tires, the race itself.
Say she is the handle of the drawer,
the door’s brass knob, the lock unlocked.
Say she’s the path. The steepest road.
The cold when the sun goes down.
Tell her she is the infinite dark,
the orbiting moon, an eagle,
the relentless wind.
Say she’s galoshes, a garage door, the faint
scent of rain. The barren winter.
The nothing you can’t quite touch.
But do not say she is beautiful.
She’ll come to crave such dross.
Tell her she’s the twisted twig,
the beacon at the bay, the river’s
song when it meets a rock, the fog,
the leaping wild rose that blooms
and thrives any damn where it pleases.
He Wants to See My Photo ID
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged identity, poem, poetry, self on November 25, 2014| 1 Comment »
I do not tell him that the woman
in the photo, who looks just like me,
only 12 years younger, does not exist.
She is smiling in the way that only
a woman who has not yet had children
can smile. She knows nothing yet
of how desperate she will become,
how she will lie, how she’ll tell the truth,
how she’ll lose her sense of worth and
replace it with, well, it’s impossible to say.
So instead, when he says, “Is this you,”
I say, “Yes, travelling to Chicago today.”
That Question, the One With No Answer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alphabet menagerie, fear, identity, poem, poetry, purpose on October 7, 2014| 6 Comments »
In a snowstorm, the yaks know to huddle together,
calves in the center. They press the bulk of their bodies so close
to each other that their breath forms a column of visible steam.
Elsewhere, in burrowed colonies, the yellow jackets
work in concert to forage for food, to feed the larvae,
to expand the nest and defend the queen.
It’s hardwired in us, this will to survive. Just look
at the yucca with its cascade of lemony petals
surrounded by tough, sword-shaped leaves.
Just look at you. Just look at me. See how we
like to hide behind our identities—lover,
loner, baker, runner, singer, prayer, biker, child.
As if we could use the list of our interests
and roles as a shield against our greatest fear—
the fear that we don’t know what we are doing here.
So we shout to each other like yodelers—here I am,
this is me, who are you? And we hold up invisible yardsticks
to ourselves, to each other, in an effort to learn our value.
And our egos rise and fall like yoyos in the hands
of a child who’s just learning to play. We think we’re someone.
We fear that we’re not. And what are we doing here anyway?
Is this why some choose solitude? Choose to live
beyond the shoulds and masks? Live like the yeti—
unknowable, unseeable, known only by stories and tracks?
Today, the hummingbirds are gone, and the waterfall is thin
in its plunge. The hours are warm though the sun is low—
and I can’t say that I know what we’re doing here,
but I think it has something to do with noticing the missing birds
and the thin waterfall and the timber in your voice when you tell me
you don’t know who you are. Me neither, friend, but whatever I am
fell in love with the way that the first morning sun today glanced
the frosted grass, and I could see dozens of columns of steam rise across
the whole field before the yellow jackets emerged from their nest.