Uncanny how she does this. Today I have been sitting here, marveling at the sudden surge in bird life around my porch. The starlings are going nuts because a blue jay has invaded the space. God knows what he’s doing here, but they want him out. Nobody is playing nice in my trees this morning.
Lance is outraged. He paces up and down the porch and attempts to bring rapprochement to this war by adding his voice to the fray. No one pays attention to him. I suspect that they do not take him seriously.
Then I read Emily’s next poem. It begins: “I have a Bird in spring/ Which for myself doth sing—” Again this is a discussion of loss and her acceptance that this brief physical life is not the only one. Today Emily is missing others who are gone. “though they now depart,/ Tell I my doubting heart/ They’re thine.”
Here’s my favorite:
In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.
For one thing, I love that she doesn’t even try to rhyme “see” and “removed”. She does this throughout. Among all these lovely perfect rhymes she’ll drop a complete clunker. Not even a slant rhyme. Such defiance! The turd in the punch bowl.
Or the alternating shocks in an ordinary lifetime. The painful pause when we know something has gone wrong. Of course this causes one doubt. How can any of this so-called life be worthwhile if it hurts so much? Emily draws the reader back into her rhyme and rhythm. Find the next beat in the music, she asks. pain/pleasure harmony/discord fight/ peace flight/return
Today feels like a pause between two beats of music. As if I am holding my breath, waiting for the music to carry my foot into the next step of the dance. It is an interval between discord and harmony, where I hang in nothingness. No movement. A portion of time where anything is possible.
Emily Every Day 