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!
Emily Every Day 