“Till summer folds her miracle”

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THE SPRINGTIME’S pallid landscape
Will glow like bright bouquet,
Though drifted deep in parian
The village lies to-day.


The lilacs, bending many a year,
With purple load will hang;
The bees will not forget the time
Their old forefathers sang.


The rose will redden in the bog,
The aster on the hill
Her everlasting fashion set,
And covenant gentians frill,


Till summer folds her miracle
As women do their gown,
Or priests adjust the symbols
When sacrament is done.

~Emily Dickinson

The lilacs are browning, their heady fragrance now a memory. How quickly flowers pass! Now the peonies are tight buds atop long green stalks, waiting. Lilies and irises are a promise only, thickets of green spikes.

The wildflowers, though, are hardier things, despite being smaller and seeming so delicate. Daisies are blooming in the field now. Dandelions and Queen Anne’s lace and all those little white and purple and yellow things I cannot name will flourish all summer long. But they, too, will give way to winter. Best to hold on to the beauty of these spring days as tightly as possible.

The mundane becomes magical

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SHE sweeps with many-colored brooms,
And leaves the shreds behind;
Oh, housewife in the evening west,
Come back, and dust the pond!


You dropped a purple ravelling in,
You dropped an amber thread;
And now you’ve littered all the East
With duds of emerald!


And still she plies her spotted brooms,
And still the aprons fly,
Till brooms fade softly into stars—
And then I come away.

~emily dickinson

Prompt: Who is the “housewife in the evening west?” A goddess? a spirit? something else? There’s all kinds of magic here to play with.

Image via Pixabay

Secrets

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THE SKIES can’t keep their secret!
They tell it to the hills—
The hills just tell the orchards—
And they the daffodils!


A bird, by chance, that goes that way
Soft overheard the whole.
If I should bribe the little bird,
Who knows but she would tell?


I think I won’t, however,
It’s finer not to know;
If summer were an axiom,
What sorcery had snow?


So keep your secret, Father!
I would not, if I could,
Know what the sapphire fellows do,
In your new-fashioned world!

~emily dickinson

One of the biggest surprises for me of this project has been discovering how many of Dickinson’s poems have been set to music. This one is no exception–there’s a choral version, apparently arranged for middle school choir by a middle school teacher. There’s also a more operatic version, which you can listen to here, if you’re so inclined.

As I read through the poem, I’m not sure what to say about it. It’s one I feel like I need to discuss with somebody. The first two stanzas make sense to me, but the last two…..I get lost on “If summer were an axiom.” If summer were easily quantifiable/understandable? Why “snow” if we’re talking about summer? And who are the “sapphire fellows” in the final stanza? Are they birds? Pieces of the blue sky? I’m not sure what to make of it, but the overall feeling seems clear–the world is a beautiful place, magical even. Maybe we don’t need to quantify it in order to appreciate it–and maybe that’s what Dickinson is doing with her poem, weaving language in an unquantifiable way in order to mimic the inexplicable beauties of nature.

The whole poem has the feel of an impressionist painting. Splashes of words create an emotional response, even if/though individual words might not make a ton of sense out of context.

may-flower

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PINK, small, and punctual.
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,


Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.


Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

~Emily dickinson

According to the title imposed on the poem after Dickinson’s death, this one is about the may-flower. I had to look it up, and this is what I found. My big takeaways: apparently they are highly fragrant, extremely delicate, and difficult to find. I’ve never seen one; the wildflower website I consulted says they grow in my state, but in sandy loam, which is the opposite of the red clay soil we have here in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.

Regardless of species, though, spring’s flowers are precious, fleeting, lovely. Your prompt for today: go outside and find them. Enjoy the flowers for a few moments, no matter how busy you may be. You won’t regret it.

Hummingbird

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A Route of Evanescence,
With a revolving Wheel –
A Resonance of Emerald
A Rush of Cochineal –
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts it’s tumbled Head –
The Mail from Tunis – probably,
An easy Morning’s Ride –

~Emily dickinson

Last weekend, I put up the hummingbird feeder. It seemed a bit optimistic–the nights here can still dip below freezing in spring, and the danger of frost won’t pass until late May.

And then, a couple days later, after a long Monday, I was washing dishes at the kitchen sink when a flitter of movement caught my eye. I looked up to see a hummingbird at the feeder, deep emerald with a white band around its neck, and my heart surged.

I can’t explain what exactly it is about hummingbirds. They’re not particularly nice people–they will death-dive each other with their rapier-keen beaks, and they don’t discriminate by species or even size. There have been times when I thought I was going to end up with a hummingbird beak in my skull as I worked in the yard and a particularly feisty hummer decided I shouldn’t be there. They are fairly hideous to each other, refusing to yield even one spot at a four-spot feeder.

But they are pure magic. So tiny, so fierce, so incredibly alive. They are exactly what Dickinson says they are. And the sight of one can transform a long Monday from a slog into a place where magic lives.

Image via Pixabay

Blue jay

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NO brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the Jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity


Pursuing winds that censure us
A February day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.


The snow and he are intimate;
I ’ve often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity,


I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky,
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.


The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder—terse and militant—
Unknown, refreshing things;


His character a tonic,
His future a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.

~Emily dickinson
Bluejay (Image via Shutterstock)

My favorite poems are the ones that help me see the world through fresh eyes. This is one of those.

Throughout the year, blue jays frequent our feeders, driving off all other birds and hogging the seed. They are loud, messy, rambunctious. It would never occur to me to describe them as “civic,” a “neighbor,” “the brother of the universe.”

And yet, somehow, when I read Dickinson’s poem, I agree with her. The jay is all these things. Maybe not at the feeder, perhaps not when presented with a pile of black oil sunflower seeds and a host of sparrows–but there is something wonderful about jays, something I’ve previously overlooked. Something in their strength, resilience, persistence. Around here, we complain about them, but seen through fresh eyes they’re beautiful creatures, strangely exotic amongst all our little brown and grey birds.

So thanks, Emily. I’ll look at them a bit differently from now on.

The woodpecker

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HIS bill an auger is,
His head, a cap and frill.
He laboreth at every tree,—
A worm his utmost goal.

~emily dickinson
Pileated woodpecker, via Wikipedia

This is a perfect little jewel of a poem. Every line conveys something essential about a woodpecker–each one tells us exactly what Dickinson is describing, though she never comes out and says it.

Your prompt, for this spring day, is to spend a little time watching the feathered denizens of your little patch of Earth. Then choose one and write four lines that unmistakably describe that particular creature, without naming it. Happy writing!

No notice was to me…

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Two Butterflies went out at Noon—
And waltzed above a Farm—
Then stepped straight through the Firmament
And rested on a Beam—


And then—together bore away
Upon a shining Sea—
Though never yet, in any Port—
Their coming mentioned—be—


If spoken by the distant Bird—
If met in Ether Sea
By Frigate, or by Merchantman—
No notice—was—to me—

~Emily dickinson

Butterfly season has begun. The little pale-violet moths appeared first, their color scarcely a whisper above white. Next, a larger orange and black-veined butterfly, and then a black one with shimmering blue spots. How ephemeral they are, how delicate–the wind or a small bird’s beak can destroy them. Yet they persist, somehow, eternal despite their fragility. Their coming feels momentous as the arrival of a queen after winter’s frigid dry air and short days. When they disappear into an impossibly blue sky, are they ever really gone, or do they transcend all of it, this warming spring day, this greening field, this world perched forever on the brinks of seasons?

Emily Dickinson, Nature-Girl

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This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,—
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.


Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

~emily dickinson

Is this the most famous Emily Dickinson poem? If not, it’s got to be right up there. I can’t remember the first time I read this poem–perhaps it was an elementary school English class. I suspect anyone who’s ever taken a literature course in the United States could quote the first line or two. It serves as an epigraph in collections of Dickinson’s poetry, though those poems were not arranged by her, so their order is at least somewhat arbitrary. The poem itself seems pretty straightforward.

As I read it for the gazillionth (??) time, though, something new jumps out at me–the way that Dickinson seems to equate herself with Nature. In the first stanza, she announces that this (this poem?) is her “letter to the world,” and then there’s an Em-dash and then “the simple news that Nature told.” The setup of the stanza seems to be equating “my letter” with Nature’s news.

Then, in the second stanza, the speaker asks that her countrymen “judge tenderly of” her because of their love of Nature. Throughout the short poem, Dickinson seems to be conflating her poetry with Nature’s creation. She is a microcosm of Nature Herself, able to create entire worlds in verse. Like Nature, the poet is a creator, a maker of things, a breather of life into what was lifeless, a transformer of the raw materials of words/world into meaning and matter.

Bereaved acknowledgment

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I DREADED that first robin so,
But he is mastered now,
And I ’m accustomed to him grown,—
He hurts a little, though.


I thought if I could only live
Till that first shout got by,
Not all pianos in the woods
Had power to mangle me.


I dared not meet the daffodils,
For fear their yellow gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own.


I wished the grass would hurry,
So when ’t was time to see,
He ’d be too tall, the tallest one
Could stretch to look at me.


I could not bear the bees should come,
I wished they ’d stay away
In those dim countries where they go:
What word had they for me?


They ’re here, though; not a creature failed,
No blossom stayed away
In gentle deference to me,
The Queen of Calvary.


Each one salutes me as he goes,
And I my childish plumes
Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
Of their unthinking drums.

~emily dickinson

This is a strange one indeed. The speaker is talking about things that Dickinson typically gets excited about–robins, daffodils, bees–but instead of anticipating them, she tells us she has “dreaded” them. The robin “hurts a little,” the “pianos in the wood” can “mangle” her, the daffodils’ yellow can “pierce” her. If it’s aware of her needs, Nature ignores them, showing no deference to her feelings. She is the “Queen of Calvary”–the queen of suffering? The queen of salvation? What exactly does this mean?

Such a strange poem. The speaker describes the beauties of spring as torments and herself as “bereaved.” What is she grieving? Does the freshness and new life of spring remind her of something she can’t have, something she lost? Why does spring hurt?

There is something in these early days of spring–some underlying coldness on the sunniest days, some lingering frost–that reminds us that spring is not forever. Of all the beauties of the year, spring’s somehow seem the most fleeting, the most fragile. Blossoms are easily crushed, and bees may live for only weeks or days. Perhaps it’s this ephemerality that pains Dickinson–the knowledge that all this beauty, from the moment it bursts forth, is already passing into memory.