Two Poems by Karly Randolph Pitman

Picking Up the Pieces

Sometimes you wish your life were as tidy
as a jigsaw puzzle, where each piece fits
and finds their place. You want to feel the release
as the jumble of colors come together
into an ordered whole. But it’s tension, not ease,
that holds the pieces together – a puzzle needs
enough difficulty to be fun. You think
a piece fits here but it lives somewhere else.
You get stuck, swap two pieces, and the puzzle
flows again. When there’s an odd shaped piece
you get confused, wonder if it’s in the wrong box.
But as the picture takes shape you discover how
even this stray piece belongs. This fills you with delight,
how something you thought was wrong turns out
to be right, how the puzzle needs every piece
to make sense. After the puzzle’s done these
strange pieces are the ones you remember,
not the ones you assembled quickly out of the box.
As the pieces click into place you wonder about
everything sideways in your life, the disordered
pieces that can’t possibly fit. You wonder
what picture they’re creating, what whole
they complete – how you might fit, too.
You live the puzzle of your life and wonder
what beauty will appear as each difficult,
mysterious, unloved piece finds their home.

*

New Math

“Money, what do you like most? Changing hands.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan

They arrive in the mail in white envelopes,
pleas for medicine and support for elephants.
You slice them open and read their stories –

the pregnant woman riding in the back of a truck
for hours, desperate to reach the hospital where
a surgery will save her life. The family from

Honduras sleeping for months with their four
children on city streets. You want to feed
every hungry envelope with hundred dollar bills.

When you can’t you’re surprised by your delight:
there are ten million charities in the world!
Ten million people who saw a need and said, yes.

There are so many places where people want to help
that you can’t possibly fill every envelope. It will take
thousands of you: I’ve got this one. You take another.

You know, today, there are families fleeing famine,
falling bombs and wildfires. You see the horror.
You also see ten million people lined up to help,

millions more who will send checks. As life
continues with its tragic loss others are already
planning: this is how we’ll take care of each other.

*

Karly Randolph Pitman is a writer, teacher, facilitator and mental health trainer who brings understanding to sugar addiction, overeating and other ways we care for trauma. You can find her poetry at O Nobly Born, a reader supported newsletter, and her healing work with food at her substack, When Food is Your Mother. She lives in Austin, Texas where she does as much as possible with her hands and is writing a book on bringing compassion to food suffering.