Monthly Archives: November 2009

Here is something dredged up from the archives where it has been resting since September 21st.

Monday morning weather report: Venus moves into Virgo and the sun is about to transition into Libra. We are on the turning point from summer to fall. The Autumnal Equinox, a day of equal light and darkness, balanced on the border between awake and asleep.

A blackbird calls from the pecan tree, heard but not seen. I thought they were done with me. Now they taunt from a distance. Not making themselves visible but loud in the treetops in the yard of the house next door.

#518, c. 1862

Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night
Had scarcely deigned to lie —
When, stirring, for Belief’s delight,
My Bride had slipped away —

If ’twas a Dream — made solid — just
The Heaven to confirm —
Or if Myself were dreamed of Her —
The power to presume —

With Him remain — who unto Me —
Gave — even as to All —
A Fiction superseding Faith —
By so much — as ’twas real —

This poem comes a couple of weeks after I had a dream about Emily. She arrived in the dream with two names. First it was “Zoe”, Greek for “life” in the sense of God-given life or abundant life. Not the biological or animal nature of life. Then she acknowledged that her secret code name was “Emily”. This was the name that she used to connect meaningfully with other women, she explained. By “Emily” shall she be known to other women. Then the dream figure “Emily” told me that I have been writing to her all along and that we are soul mates. This was the plunge into the abysmal waters that my other dreams had pre-figured. All those nighttime visits to the ocean, where I had floated safely on the surface, only sensing the depths. Here was the invitation into the place below the dark water. I’m still hesitating. I still don’t know what it means to take this archetype as my “bride” as the above poem instructs. Who am I “marrying” here? What am I embracing?

This idea of “Emily”, the essence of this poetic voice is feminine in a manner more raw and vibrant than I have heard before. This bride does not wear veils or flowers. She is no virgin or at least not in the sense of being physically untouched. But a virgin perhaps (Venus goes into Virgo) in that she is wholly new to herself each time she comes to the page. No one claims her there. She claims herself. Her innocence remains intact because experience does not remove that pure desire to know her own mind and arrive at the words without anguish or influence. She is a bride each day with each poem, each page, untouched by what . . .? Other people. Their expectations, needs, social and historical constraints, the bruises and detritus of living in a body, the world, all of it. She is wholly herself.

The blackbirds interrupt my thoughts. There are two now calling to each other. Tricksters from another realm. Can’t believe a word they say. And they never shut up!

Let’s see. What to report? Venus in Scorpio. Mars in Leo. This is an unstable placement. Not surprising, Emily is in love. Crazy in love, it sounds like:

#247, 1861

What would I give to see his face?
I’d give — I’d give my life of course —
But that is not enough!
Stop just a minute — let me think!
I’d give my biggest Bobolink!
That makes two — Him — and Life!
You know who “June” is —
I’d give her —
Roses a day from Zanzibar —
And Lily tubes — like Wells —
Bees — by the furlong —
Straits of Blue
Navies of Butterflies — sailed thro’ —
And dappled Cowslip Dells —

Then I have “shares” in Primrose “Banks” —
Daffodil Dowries — spicy “Stocks” —
Dominions — broad as Dew —
Bags of Doubloons — adventurous Bees
Brought me — from Firmamental seas —
And Purple — from Peru —

Now — I have bought it —
“Shylock”? Say!
Sign me the Bond!
“I vow to pay
To Her — who pledges this —
One Hour — of her Sovereign’s Face”!
Ecstatic Contract!
Niggard Grace!
My Kingdom’s worth of Bliss!

First thing she’s ready to sign away is her life. A mere trifle. You might think that is all she has to offer. But no. Powerful Emily has at her disposal all of Nature. Birds. Roses. The entire month of June itself. All these belong to Emily. She encompasses all this. Hers to give away. Nature, its inhabitants and Time. She has everything except the one thing she wants—one hour with the one she loves.

Even more curious is her identification of him as her sovereign. He is the ruler of her heart. (I hear Irma Thomas warming up in the background.) What also catches my attention is how Emily arranges the world. There the great big him at the top. Then her. Then everything else. She rules all of Nature, but he rules her. She has no dominion over the one she loves. Her enormous power to possess dissolves in the face of her beloved.

That must be frustrating to be Queen of all the world and everyone in it, except the one she desires. All that power for . . . what? Nothing. What good is it if she can’t have the one she wants? (That’s a rhetorical question, of course. No answer is required.)

I find this discussion of love in financial and political terms interesting. All this business of banks and stocks and kingdoms is amazingly prescient. To be governed by love. Bought and paid for, too. Yep, it sure seems that way most times. Sometimes I think Emily had a time machine. She’s visiting our world and then going back to the 1860s to write about it. Then she puts it into a time capsule for us to find.

Have to say . . . it embarrasses me a little that she would throw herself after him like this. A modicum of dignity Emily, please.

Here is a remnant from the past. November 3rd, 2009. It had to marinate in the notebook for a bit before making its debut.

#514, c.1862

Her smile was shaped like other smiles —
The Dimples ran along —
And still it hurt you, as some Bird
Did hoist herself, to sing,
Then recollect a Ball, she got —
And hold upon the Twig,
Convulsive, while the Music broke —
Like Beads — among the Bog —

The satsumas are coming ripe. The meyer lemons in my side yard too. The fig tree is nearly lying on its side, so tired of trying to stand up on its own. I’ll have to post that up before too long or I’ll have a fig vine instead of a tree. My yard is so small that it’s hardly worth the name, yet I feel overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to keep it going.

I pay tiny men to mow the lawn. When Geoff saw the patch of grass that I was referring to as the “lawn”—that I pay someone else to mow because I won’t— he tried hard not to laugh. I had to explain: I don’t cut my own hair, and I don’t mow my own lawn.

How can a smile hurt? When it stops. When the one smiling becomes distracted by some thought other than the one being smiled upon. Is it really that simple? Yes.