Category Archives: Emily Every Day

Point of order. I am retrieving a poem I had selected some weeks ago that I didn’t know what to do with. Conscience compels me to keep this practice orderly and work with the poems that Chance places in my hand. So here is Emily’s thought on the source of life:

#460, c. 1862

I know where Wells grow — Droughtless Wells —
Deep dug — for Summer days —
Where Mosses go no more away —
And Pebble — safely plays —

It’s made of Fathoms — and a Belt —
A Belt of jagged Stone —
Inlaid with Emerald — half way down —
And Diamonds — jumbled on —

It has no Bucket — Were I rich
A Bucket I would buy —
I’m often thirsty — but my lips
Are so high up — You see —

I read in an Old fashioned Book
That People “thirst no more” —
The Wells have Buckets to them there —
It must mean that — I’m sure —

Shall We remember Parching — then?
Those Waters sound so grand —
I think a little Well — like Mine —
Dearer to understand —

She would rather sit with her own depth, little though it be compared to the grand spiritual traditions of the world, promises made by the mythologies preserved in Old Books. The water that truly quenches a thirst is the water, the sustenance, that she finds within herself. That is a satisfaction she can understand.

Emily is so modest. She refers to her own well as “little”. But the Kingdom of Heaven lies in a mustard seed. Or so I’ve heard. Quantum physics points to the greatest mystery of all at the sub-atomic level where one electron can be in two places at one time, and the smallest center of everything is dark space, moving constantly. Nothing is solid.

So Emily’s “little well” possesses all the depth she needs because it is hers, and it’s the direct experience of her own being. It makes sense. It does not have the bucket needed to bring the water up to the top. The bucket is the philosopher or the priest or the shaman. The one in the community who explains what is down there in the dark and brings the wisdom up from the depths of the subconscious to the upper air, where the rest of us, too afraid of the dark to go ourselves, wait for sustenance. Some are chosen to descend. Others wait above. The truth hovers below the words.

Emily’s well does not need a bucket because she is both the source of the water, as well as the one who thirsts. Her job is to sit beside her well and know the wisdom lies in her own depths, not in the pages of an old fashioned book. Ironically it is also her job, as poet, to struggle for the right words. That is her thirst that may never be quenched. All words, any words, fall short.

This morning, during meditation, I sank into the darkness behind my eyes. A space where there is no time and no borders, no distinctions. Just the vast, unrolling dark. And the breath moving up and down my spine. In midst of a chaotic world, and when is it ever not chaotic, this is the only thing that does make sense.

We have just passed Midsummer. August 2nd is the literal mid-point of the summer, leaving six more weeks until the Autumn Equinox. This time or thereabouts (it varies by a couple days from calendar to calendar) coincides with the holiday Lammas, which is the corn harvest. We offer an effigy of the sun king for sacrifice in the form of a doll fashioned from corn husks. We make the offering to propitiate the earth in the hope that she will reward us with bountiful food. Emily tossed off this note:

#962, c. 1864

Midsummer, was it, when They died —
A full, and perfect time —
The Summer closed upon itself
In Consummated Bloom —

The Corn, her furthest kernel filled
Before the coming Flail —
When These — leaned into Perfectness —
Through Haze of Burial —

Just as the kernel of corn, or any one of us, reaches our fullest potential that is the precise moment that we tip over the edge toward the next cycle and decline into death. That potential is the thing we were born to do. The goal residing in our DNA that drives us through life. There is at least one thing we work toward our whole life. The moment of reaching this fulfillment of purpose co-emerges simultaneously with descent. There is no such thing as ascending up and up indefinitely. The cycle always takes us back to the point of disintegration.

Emily says, harvest the corn and eat while it’s perfect. If you wait a day, it’s ready for the coffin.

I hear her talking about the process of writing. Each time I begin a new story, I can feel the energy of creation pushing me through the story, as if a galloping horse has taken over. As though, my DNA demands the story to emerge. As soon as I have put what I think are the last touches or final edits (if these are ever final) there is an immediate euphoria. A distinct sense that I have fulfilled my destiny. Done what all my cells and blood and bones have collected themselves here to do. That euphoria lasts for a time, and then something opens up. A crack, an open space, a deflation, a decline toward death. A conviction that I am only as good as my last story. And all of them, all those words in the past, are as fodder for the pig sty. Rotted husks.

Whenever I go back to read an old story, it sounds dead to me. I can remember the sense of aliveness when I wrote it. The feeling of legs galloping under me. But once it leaves my fingertips, and goes out to the world, it’s as if I don’t recognize the story as mine any longer. Now all I have is the empty space before me that I am supposed to fill. Or grow a new pair of legs.

It never ends, this cycle of reaching for fulfillment then moving into decay. I guess I should be grateful for that continuity. I must say it’s an exhausting process to be aware of. You try growing a new pair of legs out of thin air over and over. It wears a person out.

True story. Yesterday, after I finished writing the entry about the photo of me at age 16, wearing my grandmother’s wedding dress and dancing in the garden, I opened my volume of Emily’s poems at random. I slipped the photo between the pages without looking at the place I had selected . . . totally at RANDOM. No lie.

This morning, I opened my book and fanned the pages until I reached the place where the photo had landed. There I was, dancing in the garden on page 115. The page facing me contained the following remarks from Emily:

#249, c. 1861

Wild Nights — Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our Luxury

Futile — the winds
To a Heart in port —
Done with the Compass —
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden —
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor — Tonight —
In Thee!

Curiouser and curiouser. Emily, what are you doing? Are you trying to send me a message? Do you know something I don’t? Or is this all just a tease?

(Can’t help but notice here that Emily wrote a great deal about the sea, while she lived in a land-locked village. For her the ocean must have been more a theoretical than a lived experience. Still, it spoke to her.)

Okay, so . . . it seems clear that the Poet here addresses her passionate attention to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That uppercased “Thee” at the end could only be a reference to the Son of God. Right? Of course, right. I’d stake my reputation on this assertion.

Also . . . if Emily were my daughter, I would not let her out of the house at night. Not that that would stop her, but it might slow her down a little.

This poem makes me sweat. Maybe it’s the weather. Or I’m having a hot flash. Something is up.

Lunar eclipse and full moon tonight. Look alive.