Category Archives: Emily Every Day

Emily presents a difficult one today. My friend Shaun calls these “inscrutable.” In this case, I have to agree. Others like to say that Emily’s poems are so accessible. I don’t know where this idea comes from. I have to wait for the four lines below to unravel. I stare at them, walk with them in my mind, and wait for a thread to open it up. Here it is:

#899, c. 1864

Herein a Blossom Lies —
A Sepulchre, between —
Cross it, and overcome the Bee —
Remain — ’tis but a Rind.

A day has gone by, and I still don’t know what to make of the above. But I’ll plunge into it anyway.

The poem tells us where a flower actually resides. It is not in the fleshy petals. That is only the empty Rind, left behind. The Sepulchre that holds the body. The true nature of the flower is invisible. It is the fragrance. The essence that we know exists because the Bee is drawn to it.

The flower’s fragrance, like the invisible essence of the human spirit, is what truly animates. It’s the thing that brings us into “the family of things.” When we exist in relationship or in work with others, the bees who are drawn to us, come because we emanate something invisible. A scent, a sigh, a soul.

To be dazzled by the fleshy petals is to mistake the flower’s or the person’s true nature.

Emily also implies a question that hangs in the periphery of the poem. She asks where does the scent go after the Rind rots away? It lies in the memory of the Bee, perhaps?

Once again, Em requires that we sit with these dense overlapping possibilities and not think. You won’t ever get to know this poem. You might allow it to be near you and not demand too much more than that.

Lately, I have been savoring all the possibilities that reside in one moment. That we move along most of our lives, believing we are doing what we are supposed to be doing, given all that came before and all that we expect to come in the future. Yet, we never know the enormous potential in each passing moment. That I might say this word instead of that could change everything. Or make a right turn here instead of a left. Each small choice could bring me to an entirely new and different life.

I am living in this house because I walked down this street and saw a “for sale” sign in front of this house. If I had chosen another street that day six years ago, I wouldn’t be on this porch now. Maybe I’d be on another porch somewhere else. Maybe I’d be sitting on a porch in Vermont.

If I had not stopped in by the Spotted Cat one night eight years ago (where I found Lance as a puppy, on the loose, having just escaped capture by the SPCA) I would not have this mutt at my feet now. Lance would have a different name and be living with some other person. Or maybe he’d be dead. In any case, he wouldn’t be here with me on this porch. If I had stepped into this doorway instead of that doorway, I would not have Lance. Maybe I wouldn’t have any dog, and I’d be spending my summers in Japan. In that case, I would not know any of the people that Lance has introduced me to.

It was a choice that set off a vector line in one direction that has brought me here, far away from the point that a different choice taking me on a different vector line would have brought me. One vector line sets off other vector lines all along the way and so on. It’s dizzying to look at the series of seemingly trivial, one-shot decisions we make that comprise a whole life.

The idea that we plan anything is pure illusion. Once we put our lives into the hands of Chance, we must accept the outcome and recognize that we are determining our direction when we are least aware of it. We work with Chance, but only Chance knows it.

Often it is the smallest choice that puts us here 20 years from now, not there. So it helps to pay attention.

One right after the other.  Emily every day, each day more horrible than the next.  And more amusing.

#410, c. 1862

The first Day’s Night had come—
And grateful that a thing
So terrible — had been endured —
I told my Soul to sing—

She said her Strings were snapt—
Her Bow — to Atoms blown —
And so to mend — gave me work
Until another Morn —

And then — a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my face —
Until it blocked my eyes —

My Brain — begun to laugh —
I mumbled — like a fool —
And tho’ ’tis Years ago — that Day —
My Brain keeps giggling — still.

And Something’s odd — within —
That person that I was —
And this One — do not feel the same —
Could it be Madness — this?

I love the image of Emily’s Brain giggling.  My focus goes to the last stanza where she questions her own sanity.  I don’t believe she really thinks her grip on her mind is loosening.  Or if it is, then it is a divine sort of madness.

The part I zero in on is that she looks at herself in the past, the girl who has suffered some horror, and feels she is not the same person now, who can see the past and laugh at it.  In the past, the horror filled her eyes such that it felt real, as if it would be all she’d ever see again . . . for the rest of her life!!  Oh, the drama.  Emily has sport with her own emotional extremes.  I love her self-mockery here.  She calls herself a fool, but it doesn’t sound angry so much as amazed at her own ability to create dramas with her mind.

This is the same mind or “Brain” that can also look with some distance on her emotional melodrama and be amused by it. Maybe there is a difference between Brain and mind.  Or Brain and Soul.  The Soul can’t sing.  She is wounded, her bow and strings destroyed.  Forever!!

The Brain, that thinking organ, is able to take the long view and see the humor in all the Soul’s heart rending drama.  So that split between Brain and Soul is where Emily gets caught and wonders if she is crazy.  Both seem real, but how can they co-exist?

Again, I don’t take the question seriously, and I don’t think Emily does either.  This is a divine separation that she must navigate in order to understand herself.  She and I and you have many selves being born, living and dying within us all the time.  And what a relief to know there is some cool, observing intellect who can see the humor in the situation.  There is a whole village of selves, unruly, noisy, within any one of us, I imagine.  Thank God.  How boring otherwise.

I like that Emily folds herself into the embrace of her larger, intellectual self.  The Brain is the governess of this village, and She is a benevolent dictator.  What else can one do with these other noisy selves but laugh?  Treat them like a litter of puppies.  How humbling and how healthy, and what a relief to be able to laugh.  It’s a sign that we are bigger, more inclusive, than we might think.  There is more to us, more citizens in our village, than we thought at first.  More resources, more back-up.

Hey!  I welcome more selves to my village.   Strength in numbers, I always say.  Who cares if I don’t immediately recognize them.  We’ll get to know each other eventually.  I have room enough in my psyche to hold them all.  It’s big in there.  I know.  I’ve spent a lot of time wandering in that space, and I haven’t found the outer boundary yet.  Besides, I can always add another wing if need be.

Good morning.  Sweltering day.  It’s getting so I can’t even sit on the porch anymore.  Drat.  I have come to rely on this space.  The heat makes me write faster because I can’t wait to return to the refuge of the air conditioning.

here goes:  #743, c. 1863

The Birds reported from the South—
A News express to Me—
A spicy Charge, My little Posts —
But I am deaf — Today —

The Flowers — appealed — a timid Throng—
I reinforced the Door—
Go Blossom to the Bees — I said —
And trouble Me — no More—

The Summer Grace, for Notice strove —
Remote — Her best Array —
The Heart — to stimulate the Eye
Refused too utterly —

At length, a Mourner, like Myself,
She drew away austere —
Her frosts to ponder — then it was
I recollected Her —

She suffered Me, for I had mourned —
I offered Her no word —
My witness — was the Crape I bore —
Her — Witness — was Her Dead —

Thenceforward — We — together dwelt —
I never questioned Her —
Our Contract
A Wiser Sympathy

It’s interesting for me work out these poems because I find myself rolling them  between my  hands like clay rather than reading them straight through and trying to wrestle them into submission.  This one threw a shot of light to my eye when I was writing it into my notebook.  When I saw the words on the page, I read them top to bottom instead of left to right.

“The Summer Grace, for Notice strove—

Remote — Her best Array —

The Heart — to stimulate the Eye

Refused too utterly —”

From reading this down not across, I get “Remote the Heart Refused too utterly.”  Then it seemed the uppercase “Her” is Mother Nature herself, not a literal, flesh-clothed woman.  Emily is aligning herself in concert with Nature and her movement from blossom to frost-covered death.

When I return to “Remote the Heart Refused too utterly,” I close in on “too”.  Why not just “utterly”?  That would make the point.  No, Em says “too utterly”.  The angry heart has gone too far, refused too much.  Closed the door to life with too extreme a renunciation.  A little melodrama, perhaps?  Surely, spring will come again.  It always has in the past.  Or this is the strength and the passion of a girl’s heart that knows no moderation.  Has no experience to measure its pain against and so goes too far.  This is all the heart knows.  An untutored heart cannot anticipate some other life beyond the moment at once.  This is the hearth’s truth.  

Emily plunges into this truth without hesitation or fear.  Some might call her reckless.  She would call herself “too utterly”.  Funny, she knows she’s going too far.  But that doesn’t slow her down a bit.  This, too, is the way of girls.

We’d be awfully bored without them.