Venus makes her ingress into Gemini today and will remain there for three weeks. People ask, what does this mean? I believe it means that you may have difficulty remembering the name of your lover at the most inopportune moment. Or you may accidentally address him by the incorrect name. Fortunately beneath such beneficent skies, all is forgiven. Emily’s contribution to the day:
#839, c. 1864
Always mine!
No more vacation!
Term of Light this Day begun!
Failless as the fair rotation
Of the Seasons and the Sun.Old the Grace, but new the Subjects —
Old, indeed, the East,
Yet upon His Purple Programme
Every Dawn, is First.
Again this hungry assertion, “Mine!” Almost unladylike.
One has to wonder where does this constantly renewing joy and optimism come from. Does she really believe, or can any of us believe, that a new day is just as new as she says? Truly a first? By that I mean to ask: Does Emily really expect us to get up in the morning without any residue of the previous day? How does she do it, I wonder.
I rush out of sleep, often with my heart hammering in my chest, filled with anxiety over what I failed to accomplish the day before. Or anticipating what I must endure in the coming day. I am never new. Always cloaked in the old, dead day which shapes my dread of the so-called “new” day.
How does Emily get up in the morning and write a poem with as much enthusiasm as if “Every Dawn is First”? Where does her belief come from? I don’t sniff out a Christian agenda here. She’s too earthy for that. But something bracing and alive and fresh ignites in her time and again without more provocation than a sunrise. I’d love to steal a coal from Emily’s furnace. I’d love to share that core belief that Now is Real.
Emily Every Day 