What does it mean to know something?
I look at the river birch on the boulevard
and I wonder

what does it know?
Must it think to know things?
Who knows?

Who is the knower?
And how do they know when they know
what they want to know?

How do animals know?
Animals don't have sleepless nights thinking
and thinking ad nauseum
to solve what they don't know.

The elder geese know
to protect their goslings
hurriedly crossing the trail
before me and my bike.

Even the goslings know.

Not long before
Nicholas died
I dreamt it.
I knew.

While remembering a key Joey buried
in the yard long ago
I found the key
underground.
I knew.

While not trying to solve
a mystery in my life
A question appeared
and the answer was clear.
I knew.

While listening to a poem
about a mother's death.
My mother called to say
her beloved husband is dying.
Knowing is simultaneous.

Indigenous peoples have the knowing.
They know
It resides within
not without.

Modern humans assume autonomy
from everything.
We can have something.
But we are not the something we have.
Like knowing.

When I stop trying to know
stop thinking and thinking
and thinking

If I ask the right question

I sense it
I know
The knowing is the knower.

We are not independent
of the knowing we seek

The knower and knowing are one.

Holly Margl
June 2023

Holly Margl is the award-winning author of Witnessing Grief; Inviting Trauma and Loss to Our Coaching Conversations, An Enneagram Perspective, coach, coach mentor, and trainer specializing in grief, trauma, and the Enneagram.