Category Archives: Emily Every Day

I don’t feel like talking about Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior, but it seems He is on Emily’s mind. Here we go:

#567, c. 1862

He gave away his Life —
To Us — Gigantic Sum —
A trifle — in his own esteem —
But magnified — by Fame —

Until it burst the Hearts
That fancied they could hold —
When swift it slipped its limit —
And on the Heavens — unrolled —

‘Tis Ours — to wince — and weep —
And wonder — and decay
By Blossoms gradual process —
He chose — Maturity —

And quickening — as we sowed —
Just obviated Bud —
And when We turned to note the Growth —
Broke — perfect — from the Pod —

I’m going to treat the Christ story as just that, a story. Not to diminish it—you know me, I live and die by the story. It’s important to establish that the Judeo-Christian mythology has guided the development of western civilization so deeply and thoroughly that even the most devout atheist among us cannot extirpate this religiosity from her thinking. Our brains are saturated with this story such that it goes below conscious thinking. We can’t discern its influence any more than the fish can discern the water it swims in.

Emily is getting at this idea when she writes “magnified — by Fame”. What a funny word to use with reference to Christ’s crucifixion, as if he were a rock star, which of course he is. But what did Emily know of fame or rock stars? I think she was zeroing in on the point that all of us—whether human or blossom—live, decay and die. The difference in the Christ story is that his death is a story that people read and know about. The elevation of his death into a mediated event, an observed death, is the thing that makes Him into a character in a story, not a man.

Of course, the most crucial part of the story is that his death is a conscious one. An intentional embrace of the darkest mystery. This is his “Maturity”. Those of us who are not characters in a story, cloaked in fame, we are the wondering weepers, perplexed by death. So we tell ourselves a story about a man who conquered death by giving away his life willingly, with full awareness and trust in the God who made him.

I keep tripping over her inclusion of the word “Fame”. It sticks out as an awfully worldly concern. The word points to her understanding that his death is only meaningful—only what we say it is—if the world knows about it. Only if the death becomes famous, does it take on the force and meaning that we claim it possesses inherently. Really his death ought not to be be anymore meaningful than the decay of the flower. Unless someone witnesses the death and—here is the most important part—records the death, it effectively has no more significance than any other death.

There must be a scribe present to make Christ’s death the sacrifice that it is. Without the intelligent, crafty, and imaginative mind of the viewer (no the Writer!) as a witness to the death, there is no meaning. No gift. No emotional charge to flood our hearts, change our lives. “And on the Heavens — unrolled —”

It wasn’t God that gave Christ (or any of us) eternal life. It was the poet who wrote about him.

Without the witness to tell the story, there is no spiritual pay-off for us, no promise of new life. Nothing to prompt us to continue looking for new growth, that perfect bud that emerges or reemerges from the cave, from the pod, whatever.

Anyway people always want to give Christ the credit for the magic show. Emily quite rightly gives kudos to the writers. As we will see in tomorrow’s poem, which lies on the facing page from this one. I can’t resist a hop across the crevice. Check in later.

The day is beautiful. The lawn guy is buzzing all around so I can hardly hear myself think. Yet, something always sneaks through. Here is Emily’s idea:

#516, c. 1862

Beauty — be not caused — It is —
Chase it, and it ceases —
Chase it not, and it abides —

Overtake the Creases

In the Meadow — when the Wind
Runs his fingers thro’ it —
Deity will see to it
That you never do it —

Well, she just writes her own rules, doesn’t she. Look at that cheeky last stanza, rhyming the last three lines and leaving the first one out there, hanging in the empty air with no rhyme of its own. Lonely line.

Then she separates the line “Overtake the Creases” to make us pay attention to it. It is still linked to the first stanza by rhyming “creases” and “ceases”. But there it is alone in the middle of the poem with nothing to lean on. We have to see it as the lynch pin of the poem. The thing that God will make sure we never do. Overtake the creases.

I experience Emily’s sense of Beauty as something more than a pleasing arrangement of features, a quality of skin tone or favorable bone structure. (I can never forget Madelyn Kahn as the floozy in Paper Moon, jiggling and chirruping, “A girl’s just got to have good bone structure.”) Although none of that hurts, I’m sure Emily would agree there is something more to beauty than that.

So, “overtake the creases”? What do we do with that? Maybe this: If you try to run after the beautiful pattern in the grass of the meadow as the wind courses over it, this diverting eye-catching delight will elude you. Trying to capture such an event will leave you empty-handed, frustrated. The way to absorb this beauty is to allow it and stand in awe.

The image of the wind running “his fingers” through the grasses of the meadow figures the wind into a lover who runs his fingers through the hair of his beloved. Sweet Emily is the viewer, standing by the side, always a bridesmaid, never a bride. She may observe, not partake, of this unexpected, unsought, divinely instigated gesture of beauty and love.

Beauty is that moment of connection between wind and meadow, between lover and beloved. As spontaneous, unprovoked and ephemeral as a shift in the air. None of us can make the wind lift our hair just so. Love never appears on demand. It is not held as a debt owed. Emily, Emily, Emily. Have you been eavesdropping on my dreams? I think I know what Emily is talking about here. Her life has been well documented. But how does she know what I am thinking? Me, a lowly porch-scribbler. Whining into my coffee. Enough.

Beauty may not be pursued or grasped. Beauty may only be witnessed. This is the hardest lesson for all of us. What to do about those intoxicating fingers in our hair, the diverting bone structure, and all that that implies? Not merely the physical sensation of pleasure produced by beauty. But the sense of timelessness that accompanies it. A belief that one may be carried instantly out of one world, drear and common, into another that is perfection all at once.

Here she says it again: Trust in the unexpected. That trust is maintaining an awareness of possibility, not striving. The act of capture destroys. Possession kills. Why is this so difficult? Why would Emily’s Deity give us such a painful task? So cruel and hard to be presented with the thing we crave, and then deny us this thing if we pursue it. What did her Deity mean for us in this conundrum?

Nothing belongs to us. Not even our own beautiful lives. Attempting to possess anything betrays a profound lack of faith in bounty. Our own and the world’s. Grasping after the beauty or love we desire exposes our own failure of generosity. Shameful and self defeating. The god within will make sure we experience deprivation outside, just to make us see what a parched desert we have made of ourselves.

Emily, you are a tough nut. But I am glad to have you, all the same.

Read this first. Don’t think. Just read.
#1357, version II, c. 1876

“Faithful to the end” Amended
From the Heavenly clause —
Lucrative indeed the offer
But the Heart withdraws —

“I will give” the base Proviso —
Spare your “Crown of Life” —
Those it fits, too fair to wear it —
Try it on Yourself—

Today brings a strange poem on a strange morning on the heels of a strange dream. Also there was a penumbral Lunar eclipse this morning. Not visible in our hemisphere but felt.

Dark skies pour down rain, an acute departure from the over-bright, baking hot days of the past month. This morning feels like another continent and season. Suddenly it is cool September and we are getting ready for school. Or a journey. This dark rainy sky sends a disruption to the unchanging suffocation of the summer. Nothing really stays the same. The sky tells us so.

Meanwhile the moon winks out and back in again. Just when you think you know what life holds, something changes.

In the dream, I dive head first into the bay behind the house in New Jersey where I grew up. The blue-green water is cool and opaque and accepts me perfectly. I float on the surface of the water without effort. This is my salt bay. I ask if it’s safe for kids to swim unsupervised. Someone answers, “Well, they have swimming lessons first.”

Emily’s addition to this stormy morning leaves me nearly bereft of words. Her voice is bitter: “The heart withdraws.” “Try it on yourself.” Take your promises, your crowns, your so-called faith. I have other business. She turns away from the easy answers. There is something else. Something beneath the opaque surface of the water. Some other answer that lies below words, below the air.

That closing couplet is such a sharp rebuke. Those who really deserve the crown of life—by that I mean those who truly rise up and fill the outlines of their own destiny, their character—they have no need to wear a crown or capture a reward. They are squeezing the juice from their own lives now, while they live it. Promises are for the uncertain among us, the weaklings who are afraid to jump in the bay and dive deep.

And those wavering between the certain and the uncertain, the scribes and poets with a toe on each side . . . On some mornings, they may do nothing at all but float on the surface, sensing the depths, the words caught in their throats, stopped before they appear.