Lines and Squares
(after A. A. Milne)
Pooh had eaten all the honey. Piglet worried a lot.
Eeyore never saw the bright side.
Owl? Don’t get me started.
Christopher Robin walked around and around the tree. He was demonstrating the value of repeated acts. He was showing them how to move on.
Pooh climbed down after Piglet lowered himself to the lowest branch and flung himself into Christopher Robin’s arms.
Nothing reminds me of our human goodness more than those arms.
Across state lines my mother has begun to forget me. At first it was my name. Now it’s the notion contained in one word, daughter.
Here comes Kanga. But where is Roo?
She is marsupial in her fixation on this child of hers.
I waited a long time before knowing certain things.
This was the era of our parents’ togetherness, their hopeful, bourgeois time. All the furniture was angular, all the windows overlooked gardens and the gardens filled with rhododendrons. When the leaves point up, that means the sun will shine, our mother explained. Was she leaving even then? In that backyard, mushrooms gathered. Sometimes, when we weren’t looking, they talked among themselves.
Eat me, they clamored as we walked by.
At night, our father’s black turtleneck rose to expose a pale, hairy belly and the mystery of his navel.
He read on, inflecting. He closed one book and opened another with similar illustrations.
There remained the question of Tigger’s preference for thistles.
A thistle was a thorn, a bobby was a police officer.
England was where the Queen lived. Every morning a boy avoided the lines and squares.
He bore a resemblance to Christopher Robin, but that didn’t prove anything.
Our mother stood in the doorway, acting the part of a woman removing her apron.
I’m ever so careful to watch my feet, he read a little louder. He rolled over and showed us how to smile at a woman removing her apron.
There remained also the question of bears.
There were always so many bears.
