Where every bird is bold to go
And bees abashless play
the foreigner before he knocks
must thrust the tears away–

Reading Dickinson’s poems in her own hand, it’s hard to understand how and why all those pesky punctuation marks and capital letters ended up in the printed versions.

In this poem, Dickinson is of course talking about death, because there has never been a poet more on brand. What’s lovely and poignant, in a multilayered way, about this one is the contrast between birds/bees and the presumably human “foreigner.” Dickinson’s word choice implies that while birds and bees are part of nature and therefore exist comfortably within its cycles of life and death, human animals are different–we get upset about it.

The image of the foreigner thrusting away tears is a touching one, but deeper down there’s another level of tragedy–the fact that we human critters have become so distanced from the natural world that we cannot be bold, cannot play “abashless,” but must always be not only aware of but in fear of our inevitable end.