Step One:The Paradox of Powerlessness

Merry-Go-Round by Mark Gertler (1913)

How powerless are we?  I laugh. We’re here

alive and breathing hard; we’ve won this round.

Haha! Maybe tomorrow we can rest.

But that's when I notice the Hamster Wheel

we are caught in.  Don’t malign the beast!

The animal is the best part of us.

Some say the only people we can trust  

with power are those who have journeyed “through

powerlessness.”  Our trust in this idea

fluctuates with Israeli-Palestine

relations, bangs itself in pain among

contradictions:  First fix us, then the rest.

Where to accept our pow-POW-erlessness

first?  Just behind the stiff upper lip-ness

of our material well-being? in

the gardens we tend tearfully alert

to any slights and ready to defend ourselves?

Oh, God!  Help me let go the Royal We.

And love myself, for fierce independence

and fight, for graduating and riding

the academy as long as possible—

bronco busting and roping in closed paddocks

while whispering to wild horses: You can

trust me to know what you are going through.

We can trust me to surrender the thought

that we can use the master’s tools without

harming me, thee or they—that in the end

we can restore humanity without

a trace of addiction to structural

tools that helped make survival possible.

How powerless are we?  I choke.  I’m here

alive but breathless, having lost both trust

and time before realizing success

on these terms impoverished us.  I get

off the merry-go-round  and stop its run

only now that my pension has begun.

And that’s how powerless we were—I am.

How can I preach against the holding pat-

tern that secures our freedom now?  Can you

imagine it is possible to live

otherwise?  No?  Listen.  I burn in Hell

of inequalities that None. Will. Quell.

Suggested by today's meditation with 

Richard Rohr's Twelve-Step Spirituality: Step One

(For the first poem in this series, visit Oh, Ye of Little Faith.)

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast