In defense of helplessness

I am helpless, then allowing, then at peace, like they say about drowning

Sometimes poems arrive as echoes, heard only during our quietest moments. My latest In Defense of… is one such echo—a call-and-response between father and daughter. It begins with Charlie’s The Ride, a meditation on surrender in a rattling train car, where the helplessness of passive motion slowly loosens its grip and becomes something like peace. I answered with my own poem, written decades later, from a fleshy vessel and a different kind of rocking. His click-clacking mantra through the night; my underfoot bobbing on barreling sea. Two rides, two lives, joined in sweet helplessness.

I love picturing him swaying in that summer-night tunnel toward dawn, the rhythm of the rails carrying him into surrender. My rocking, at first, was nothing so gentle—more chaos than comfort—but helplessness taught me, too, to stop resisting, to let it be the soft beginning of surrender. These paired poems are an invitation to lean into your own ride, whether smooth or herky-jerky or entirely derailed, and to see if, even for just a moment, you can simply let it be.

As these words find their way to you, I’ll be stepping into a ride of my own this week, the beginning of my first book tour. An adventure I never imagined, carrying me from city to city, page to reader, story to story. I feel excited, strangely calm, full of good fortune and gratitude, and once again reminded to practice what the rocking has been teaching me all along: nothing can be done stop this all, so there is peace in letting the ride take me.

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Also! Pop the champagne! Going to try a little experiment and invite you LIVE to my pub day* launch party on October 14th. We’ll begin festivities at 5:15pm PT with a warm intro from my big brother, aka Sasquatch, followed by me reading an excerpt from my memoir. Family, friends and colleagues will be there in person but it won’t be the same without you. So let’s give this a try! Nothing that a phone and a little tripod wrangling can’t handle.

The Ride

riding in a rackety boxcar
   twelve hours straight
passing from the warm tunnel 
of mysterious summer night
through the clean but edgeless
barrier of dawn
into daylight
and trackside greenery
   bowed for one hundred ten like me
we chant a clack-clicking mantra
while rocking to and fro
in our omnipresent blue-grew diesel smoke
my altared mind reasons
       nothing can be done to stop this all
so helplessness
passes easily 
into sweet
effortless 
peace
       like they say about drowning

(Charles Brauer)

*

riding on a cross-water vessel
	four hours not enough
looping threads from an aquatic now
through hopeful 
memories of a steadier past
into sleep
and surrender
	sewn for a synthesis of me
i join the under-hull lapping
while rocking to a' fro
in my lasting barreling fog
sanity reasons
	nothing can be done to stop this all
so like a father’s blue-smoke ride
	(and his foreshadowed blue-watered one)
i am helpless
then allowing
then at peace
	like they say about healing

* Dear preorder lovelies,

Because of you, the first printing has sold out. The next wave of books arrives 11/11, and preorders still count until then. Help us carry this story across the USA Today Bestseller line—one ripple at a time. Already holding a copy? Consider gifting one (or a few!) this holiday season to friends who might need to hold this story close.