Category Archives: Emily Every Day

Some mornings, Emily doesn’t feel like writing more than two lines, so we get this:

#1127, c. 1868

Soft as the massacre of Suns
By Evening’s Sabres slain

No punctuation by the way, save for one demure and yet necessary apostrophe.

So, I re-wrote the rules again. Maybe I am still playing by Chance, but I have to admit that this caught my eye when I was looking at another poem on the same page. I couldn’t turn away from this one. Furthermore, I was saving it for today because today is the solar eclipse. This two-line murder of the star at the center of the our solar system seemed like the right fit.

We are on the border between Cancer and Leo. The sun is about to move into his place of exaltation. Before ascending the throne, the sun king first has to die and then come back to life again on the other side of the line.

Soft as the massacre of suns. I want to say those words over and over. By Evening’s Sabres slain. All those S-sounds. When I say it out loud, I whisper. Even when I just read it, the voice in my head is whispering. Soft. Massacre. This violence drops below the horizon, and we are in darkness.

I went looking for the Purple Martins. They used to congregate beneath the Causeway Bridge during the month of July. It was quite a show in the past. Clouds of birds moving in a supple, twittering, ellipsis, up and around the bridge. This went on for an hour before they came to rest beneath the bridge. Purple Martins are odd, territorial birds. The clowns of the air. A flock of knuckle-heads. They love coming back to the same place again and again, even if it’s not a good idea. The end of the Causeway Bridge has been their nesting place for as long as anyone can remember. Someone built a platform under the bridge so that the humans could watch the birds settle in for the night. Now, I have found that you can’t get to the viewing platform. It’s been closed off since the storm. They’re bolstering the levee, I imagine. Who knows? We have been cut off from our Purple Martins, one more casualty of the storm. Soft as the massacre of suns. One more thing we’ve had to live without, and for the most part, without knowing it’s gone either.

A soft massacre is one you might not notice. It happens with little outward sign or sound of violence. It’s that silent descent when no one is looking. When the enemy takes his quarter quickly and without rancor. It’s not personal. It’s not sneaky either. There is no moral corruption in such a murder. It is the natural order of light moving into dark. One must take the other. A relief almost. A death undeniably. A loss certainly. But one that releases itself without resistance.

Soft as the massacre of suns. I love writing it and saying it. This will be my mantra today, all day.

There is no enemy and no ally in such a battle. We know the sun will surge past the evening sky again the next morning. But when the sun comes to the end, when Emily looks at the sky, she sees a contest that the bright, life-giving force loses every time. Softly, softly. What is this muffled defeat? Her tone here is not neutral. Actually I hear excitement, as though she relishes the sight of this falling monarch. Each day, the sun king dies. In the moment of his death, the sky turns gorgeous colors and softens. In dying, the sun finally gives himself over, not only to the night, but he also releases the last portion of himself, which is the softest part. Those remaining whispers of sunlight are the most beautiful and the most tender. Only under duress and under the force of the night coming upon him, will the sun finally drop his armor and reveal what he has been protecting all day. The tender, delicate, most soft center. That explosion of pink, orange, blue, gold and purple bands of light before the end.

It’s a pity the evening has to kill the sun in order to pry loose his loveliest part. But some are stubborn that way.

Just when I think I am ready to work with my dream material, I wake up and assert, “No! I won’t have this dream in my head.” Ugh, don’t ask. It was an unpleasant visit with my ex-husband. I tried to forget the dream and only succeeded in forgetting the second half. I remembered the first half, which was the truly terrible half. The second half might have been the triumphant resolution for all I know. That’s usually where the triumphant resolution falls in dreams, but I missed it. Serves me right for being a coward. I could try again tonight, I guess.

Here is today’s poem:

#1129, c. 1868

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

So, the topic is Truth or a variation on the Truth. Today when I woke up I turned away from a truth coming through in my dream. I assume my subconscious always tells the truth. But I didn’t want it. Perhaps it was too dazzling. The dream already speaks in metaphor. How much more slant could that be? Not slant enough apparently.

In the category of Good News this morning, the gardenia by my front door coughed up a single blossom. I plucked it right away before the midday sun burned it. The weather has been too hot for the gardenia to flower, but we received a whisper of cooler, drier air in the past few days. The temperature went down to 90 degrees! So the gardenia felt brave enough to push out a blossom. I took it. This cultivar is called Mystery Gardenia, selected and planted by me for precisely that reason. I invite mystery in at my front door. You won’t find any bludgeoning clarity in this house.

So . . . Truth! We come circling back around to it again. “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.” Remember all the dream. The truth comes twisted through images.

For a recovering journalist, the idea of telling all the truth but slant is quite engaging. Most people take that for granted. They’ve been doing it all along. Telling partial truths. Or a “version” of the truth. Not me. I tell all the truth and tell it straight on, cold, unvarnished, piece by piece, and I’ll repeat a few pieces in case you missed any. I’m famous for hitting people between the eyes with the truth. (or what I think is the truth.) How boring.

Also those half-truths or versions of the truth won’t do. Emily does not advocate lying. A half-truth is a lie. She says, “All the truth.” But adds, you must bring the truth out at an angle so that it may slide through our peripheral vision. The truth is always more than anyone can bear. She does not suggest slant-wise truth telling in order to protect the teller from some consequence of the truth. That’s usually the cryptic justification for half-truths. No, Emily says you’ve got to ease into the truth at an angle to protect the fragile listener. No one can see it directly without turning away. It’s a kindness to be slant.

They say dogs won’t make eye contact with their humans because that is too invasive, too challenging. Not true in my house. Lance and I look directly into each other’s eyes with no difficulty. He gazes with pure trust and safety into my eyes, and I likewise. He’s not afraid of me or my eyes. And I love his eyes. No slant needed between us.

The other analogy is the solar eclipse. Something so extraordinary that we may not look directly at it or we will be blinded. There’s a solar eclipse tomorrow by the way. Don’t bother watching for it unless you live in China. So it is with the greatest truths. We must receive these by indirection. I’d say all truths come to us by indirection, both great and small. We don’t get anything except by means of a metaphor.

I have spent most of my life asking questions that people didn’t want to answer because the answer, the obvious answer, no one wanted to say out loud. Or being told to shut up because I was saying something no one wanted to hear. The implications of such an answer were more than anyone felt like dealing with. Not because these were so enormous. Only that they’d require some unpleasant acknowledgment of smallness, meanness, or irresponsibility. Some cobweb on the soul.

I’m usually the one dropping the other shoe. Or no actually, grabbing the other shoe from the hands of one who refuses to drop it and then throwing it onto the floor. See, now there’s a metaphor. Compress all the unruly ideas into a nice compact image. The truth by indirection.

My point being, of course, that I am a klutz when it comes to the truth. I crave the truth and am maddened by its deliberate absence. But I approach the truth as a predator, not a poet. I do love Emily’s dazzling grace, but I don’t have her ability to render the truth with such elegant precision. She is a gymnast. I take out the garbage.

One day I’ll get it right. In the meanwhile, this much I know is true: I would sit with Emily’s indirection and be happy for all of my life.

This poem sits right across the page from one of Emily’s Greatest Hits: “I dwell in Possibility —/ A fairer House than Prose —” These tend to cluster in thematic batches. So for today Emily has this to say:

#655, c. 1862

Without this — there is nought —
All other Riches be
As is the Twitter of a Bird —
Heard opposite the Sea —

I could not care — to gain
A lesser than the Whole —
For did not this include themself —
As Seams — include the Ball?

I wished a way might be
My heart to subdivide —
‘Twould magnify — the Gratitude —
And not reduce — the Gold —

Since the above lines come so close upon “a fairer House than Prose” I have to see the “this” in the first line here as a reference to her work, her poems. Her fairer house is the one in her imagination.

Emily knows herself very well. She knows where she lives and what is most important to her. The daily explosion of words from her mind onto the page. She can’t live without that, for it is her ability to conceive that near-perfect poem each day that makes the day. Without her gift for inner sight and outer expression, there is nothing. Everything around her ceases to exist or falls into the distance across the sea. Everything falls away against the vast ocean of her inner life.

She asks: Doesn’t this ability to imagine and craft the vision actually bind up the world and keep it whole as the seams do the ball? Without her work, her poems, the world, not just her world, but the objectively perceived world, falls to pieces. Unravels. Like the Tibetan monks who keep the planet spinning on its axis by maintaining a constant flow of prayer, Emily serves us by stitching together the seams of our senses with her words.

The last stanza is somewhat arresting. Can a woman who is devoted to a life’s work, such as finding the right word, also subdivide her heart to share with another?

Emily says, “No.” Her avocation demands the complete and total dedication of the heart to the task. This is not the sort of task that she dispenses with in a day, so that she is free to turn her attention and heart to another. When the shoemaker puts down his tools at the end of the day, for a brief time, until he takes up his work again, he is not a shoemaker. He may be a lover, a husband, a father, brother, son or friend. But when the writer puts down her pen, she is still a writer. She is still writing when she pours the coffee. Takes a bath, still writing. Walks the dog, yep still writing. On the phone with her mother, most especially. Sleeping, yes. Dreaming, absolutely. She is never not writing. Making love? Sorry, but yes, then too. Her heart may never be subdivided. Nor her attention. That flow of words and images never ceases. The story-making machinery between her ears never rests.

Emily wishes it was possible for the Lady Poet to exist in devotion to another and knows she could do that without loss to her avocation. She knows her heart is big enough to encompass all that she opens it to. The lack of space is not the problem. It’s that she simply cannot divide her love. She has married herself to her first love, the world inside her imagination. There may not be another.

I imagine that she permits visitors from time to time. But Emily remains clear that no one else may share that place of honor within her. No one and no thing will ever equal the love for her own ability because it all begins and ends with her words. These are her words. Everyone else is on the outside.

A casual observer might conclude that Emily is a lonely girl . . . and well . . . the soft animal of our body wants what it wants.

Emily is not lonely.

This poem voices her simple truth, a direct understanding of herself. Her serenity lies in knowing where her real attachment lives. That is to the wondrous realm she carries around within her. One that will never leave her. And never die.

It’s hard to explain this contentment, but I’ll try. The gift of imagination means never having to explain. That’s love. The wordy child begins a conversation with herself at a young age that springs from complete understanding and yields only pleasure. All obstacles dissolve into nothing. She may explore with complete freedom anything that she devises. No one ever says, “No.”

Mainly it’s just better in here than out there.