They sit in a row
outside the kindergarten,
black, red, brown, all
with those brass buckles.
Remember when you couldn’t
buckle your own
overshoe
or tie your own
overshoe
or tie your own shoe
or cut your own meat
and the tears
running down like mud
because you fell off your
tricycle?
Remember, big fish,
when you couldn’t swim
and simply slipped under
like a stone frog?
The world wasn’t
yours.
It belonged to
the big people.
Under your bed
sat the wolf
and he made a shadow
when cars passed by
at night.
They made you give up
your nightlight
and your teddy
and your thumb.
Oh overshoes,
don’t you
remember me,
pushing you up and down
in the winter snow?
Oh thumb,
I want a drink,
it is dark,
where are the big people,
when will I get there,
taking giant steps
all day,
each day
and thinking
nothing of it?
“Anne Sexton remembers what it was like to be a tiny person, how she necessarily deflected authority onto the big people around her and tried to adapt and adjust as life required, but how, even now, she looks for that guidance from without and wonders how to be a grown-up: … where are the big people,when will I get there? Where are the big people who are required to discern what really matters; where are the big people to assume responsibility; when will we get there?”
James Hollis, Jungian psychoanalyst and author, wrote Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves. On Saturday, May 14th, at 11:00 a.m. we will be soaking in the demands and questions engaged in reading this rich text that offers trail markers through the dark night of our soul.
