When you get caught between the moon and the Bermuda Triangle, Winnie the Pooh says the best you can do is believe in magic and ‘proseedcake’ in all haste.

On the third of May in 2024 as I sat in the moonlight under a thinking tree listening to the silence of the stars, I heard the braying of a donkey and followed it to the Hundred-Acre Wood of my childhood dreams.

“Well, you took your sweet time,” a gruff voice said. “I thought you’d never come. My name is Edward Bear until it wasn’t. And you are?”

“I prefer to remain anonymous,” I said. “I expect I wandered here by mistake.”

“What kind of mouse?” Pooh asked.

Slowly other animals emerged from the trees ushered forward by Eeyore, the newly crowned Philosopher King. “Nonsense, Minx,” Eeyore said staring deeply into my eyes. “You called me. Now, write down exactly what I say and don’t dawdle. I haven’t got all day. Once upon a midnight clear a bear of little brain came across a young man seated in the same spot where you’re sitting now. He had ink-stained fingers and wore a starched lace collar, faded blue jeans, and a T-shirt sporting a lifeless portrait. His name was Edward de Vere, and his pseudonym was William Shakespeare.”

Pooh scratched his head and had a deep think before mumbling to Edward in a growly voice. “Is that collar as dreadfully uncomfortable as it looks?” he said.

“Ah, finally someone with a real question,” Edward said, “You’ve no idea. My answer is a resounding YES. This collar is the bane of my afterlife. I took it off a long time ago, but whenever I meet a stranger it grows back, larger and scratchier than before. He pointed at the face on his shirt. “This is me and not me. Is it a curse or a gift. That is the question.”

“It’s a curse,” Pooh said without hesitation.

The full moon continued to paint my midnight tree in silver shadows that trickled down from its crown and followed its spine into the underground branches called roots. And so, in a clearing of untroubled thought a kinship of Edwards was born.

“Come along, Pooh there’s a good chap, Mr. Edward doesn’t have all day,” Eeyore said. “And bring Piglet with you.”

“Oh, but he does,” Pooh said smugly. “He’s been lost for hundreds of years, and I found him.”

“Ah,” Eeyore announced. “Satori. Nice. Very nice. A moment of clarity in a dark period of human chaos. We haven’t had much Satori around here for a good long while. Better late than never I always say. Owl swears by it.”

The chirping of crickets filled the silence which as it turns out is much friendlier than it sounds. In my literary world the sound of crickets represents failure and abandonment, and I said so out loud. 

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,” Pooh said. “True silence is the absence of thought that happens when you forget to think, Satori is no small feat.”

“I have small feet,” Piglet piped up. “Speshly on Saturdays.”

Without a word of a lie this story is truer than true.

An author grieving the untimely death of his wife raises telepathic newborn twins by transforming his childhood fears of bears into a supernatural story of hope and magic.