“A toad can die of light!”

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There’s a sentence I never thought I’d type.

CXXXVII
A toad can die of light!
Death is the common right
Of toads and men,—
Of earl and midge
The privilege.
Why swagger then?
The gnat’s supremacy
Is large as thine.

~emily dickinson

This is a strange puzzle of a poem. It’s pretty obviously about not getting cocky just because we’re human, or just because we carry a certain rank. Both earls and midges alike will die eventually (ah, an Emily poem about death! Surprise!!). A gnat and a human being are equally alive, and when dead, are equally dead–death is the great leveler.

But why a toad? And what on Earth is up with that first line?

In searching for answers, I found nothing that gave me what I was looking for. I was hoping to find some obscure reference to some archaic belief that sunlight kills toads. No such luck. I mean, the toads I’ve known have been twilight creatures, happiest in the gloaming or even the dark of night, but I hardly think a little light would kill one. The closest thing I found to an answer was a reference to a study that used UV and blacklight to attract insects and thus an invasive toad species for trapping in Australia.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t what Dickinson is talking about.

So as far as the reference to light goes, I’ve got nothing.

The choice of toad is interesting, though, even without that reference. Toads in folklore have been associated with the powers of evil, particularly via their roles as the familiars of witches. Another contrasting tradition says that toads have jewels embedded in their heads.

Again, I’m struggling to see what this could have to do with the meaning of the poem.

Dickinson must have been aware of the multiple significances of toads. I wonder, though, if she’s choosing here to disregard them to focus on the toads she likely encountered as a gardener–not magical, witchy toads, and not sparkly, bedazzled amphibians, but ordinary garden toads that would have sought refuge among the foliage during the heat of the day. Nothing seems closer to the Earth in a very literal sense than a toad. It is physically close, but also earth-colored, a being that looks as if it could have been hastily sculpted from the soil in which it dwells.

A toad is a humble thing, at least in human terms. But we are, after all, also made of dust, and to dust we all return. So we are no better than toads, or the midges and gnats on which they prey. No living thing is any more alive than any other living thing, regardless of stature. No reason to swagger.

XVII

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AS children bid the guest good-night,
And then reluctant turn,
My flowers raise their pretty lips,
Then put their nightgowns on.

As children caper when they wake,
Merry that it is morn,
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.

Emily Dickinson

As so many of these poems do, this one makes me wonder what kind of flowers the poet was imagining, and how different they are from mine. This time of year, the only things blooming are my scrappy purple violas, but the daylilies are putting out new leaves like it’s their job. When they start blooming, somewhere around the end of May or beginning of June or Whenever They Feel Like It, each individual flower will stick around for just one day.

I didn’t know that when I bought them. Imagine me, burying five daylilies in the front yard bed in late September and then waiting, watching as the green leaves browned and wilted and fell away, as the green shoots began pushing forward in March, as the stems grew taller and taller–three or four or five per plant, as the stems birthed buds, as the squirrels began to eat the buds and I began to lose my absolute mind in battle with them, as the first flower opened–and was gone the next day.

Such a long wait for something that isn’t here very long. I’m not sure if I think of the daylilies as babies, exactly; they’re more like sulky teenagers who take forever to wake up and then wave at you from across the house for a minute before you lose them for the day.

Bluebird

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Image source: Pixabay,
https://pixabay.com/images/search/bluebird/

Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.


With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!

~emily dickinson

Yesterday my dad was cleaning out birdhouses. He hadn’t seen a bluebird yet, he said. The tree swallows had come and gone suddenly, and he seemed certain it was because the birdhouses needed clearing out. Birds have a way of making their opinions known. Last summer, hummingbirds would hover outside my kitchen window, staring in at me as if to say “Get a move on!!” while I cleaned and refilled their feeder. So I suspect Dad was not wrong about the tree swallows.

This afternoon, while my husband and I walked the dog in the field behind our house, a bird burst from one of the newly-cleaned houses–probably a mockingbird or catbird, judging from its size and the flash of grey. Not a bluebird.

Then, suddenly, wings blazed blue across the winter-brown field. A bird perched on top of another birdhouse and sat there, watching us. I stared against the sun, trying to discern its exact color. A bluebird. They are back, and with them, hope and warmth and light, and permission, for those of us who needed it, to shout for joy to no one but ourselves.

The Grass

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THE grass so little has to do,–
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,

And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;

And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine,–
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.

And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.

And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away,–
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were a hay!

Emily Dickinson

I keep expecting these things to be unrelatable, given the hundred and fiftyish years between us and our poet, and the poems keep on scratching right at my particular itch for the day. Perhaps that’s why Dickinson has remained relevant so long: we can continue to read ourselves, easily, into her poems.

I can imagine the speaker now, looking at the grass after a long, hard day, and thinking, ‘You know, it must be great to just have to be a blade of grass.’ I’ve had that kind of day. The one that starts with a raging thunderstorm as you’re driving to work, and continues with forgetting the textbook for your 8 am class, and crescendoes to the part where you have 20 or so research paper rough drafts to critique and not enough hours in the day. Oh, and remember when you promised to build a fort with your daughter and play pirates? Good, because she hasn’t forgotten. Find somewhere to fit that in between dance practice, dinner, and breathing.

I’m not quite ready to be a hay just yet, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Practising sands

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We play at paste,
Till qualified for pearl,
Then drop the paste,
And deem ourself a fool.
The shapes, though, were similar,
And our new hands
Learned gem-tactics
Practising sands.

~EMily dickinson

Brenna: Short and sweet!

Pam: I like short and sweet!

Brenna: Okay, let’s go!

Pam: Oh, I like this!

Brenna: Have you read this one before?

Pam: I haven’t! Have you?

Brenna: I was very familiar with the first four lines, but had somehow never read the last four! I must have seen them quoted somewhere.

Pam: This one is new to me!

Brenna: Excellent! So, let’s talk poem!

Pam: It makes me think of learning something new. Like, starting off with crayons if you’re learning to draw, then getting good enough to realize you’re terrible.

Brenna: Yes! I think, on a surface level, it’s about how the simple things we learn as children transfer to adulthood.

Pam: But you’ve still learned valuable skills. Yes!

Brenna: But I think there’s more to it than that. First of all, there’s the way that we judge our past, younger, less experienced selves–we deem ourselves fools for being psyched about things like learning to tie our own shoes.

Pam: Oh, excellent point.

Brenna: Then there’s the reversal–“the shapes, though, were similar.” Maybe we weren’t so foolish after all. It almost feels like there’s a teensy tinsy implied critique here of the pearls. Real gems are virtually indistinguishable from good copies. What are we really valuing? And then “our new hands.” It’s as if not only have we changed–we’ve actually become new. We are new people now. And then “gem-tactics.” I stinkin’ love that. It’s like a whole huge social commentary in one made-up, Emilyfied compound word. Women’s self-adorning=tactics.

Pam: I like the differences between the paste and the pearls. You can do so many things with paste–you can make art, fix things. Pearls can pretty much just be admired. The average person wouldn’t have a multitude of uses for them. But we value them more.

Brenna: And “gem-tactics” sounds like “gymnastics”–the ways in which we contort ourselves to fit into our roles as adult women. Oooh, good point! Paste is useful and more fun.

Pam: I think you have this poem’s number.

Brenna: I love your point about paste. Paste has a potential that pearls do not. They are done, no longer becoming.

Pam: What does “practising sands” mean, though?

Brenna: Ooooh, Pam!! Pearls are instigated by sand!

Pam: Gasp

Brenna: Sand is what makes pearls!!! TA-DAAAAA!!!

Pam: We are the pearls!!!

Brenna: We are! AND the sand! We are Every Woman. It’s all in us.

Pam: I love this!!!

Brenna: We carry within our adult selves the grains of our child selves. They may irritate, but they have made us what we are. DANG, Emily.

Pam: Incredibly profound. I really love this one!

Brenna: It’s a great one!

Pam: And from the outset, I thought, I have no clue what this means. I can’t figure this out. And in five minutes, you opened my eyes and now we get it. And we are pearls.

Brenna: We are SO pearls.

A lot of questions about: Cocoon

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DRAB habitation of whom?
Tabernacle or tomb,
Or dome of worm,
Or porch of gnome,
Or some elf’s catacomb?

Emily Dickinson

While this is a short poem, it’s absolutely full of questions. First of all: who in the world lives in this little cocoon? We aren’t given any context clues; we don’t know what flower or branch might be holding the thing, or what color it is; we aren’t sure of the season, either. But the speaker isn’t done with questions.

“Tabernacle or tomb”: is this a place of religion–reverence, life–or is it a place of death? Put plainly, is a butterfly going to come out of this chrysalis, or has it already exited? Is it lying dead in its self-made coffin, unknown to us?

“Or dome of worm”: is the worm not yet turned into a butterfly? Have we happened on the site too early to have witnessed any change? Or are we talking about the worm here in the Shakespearean sense, as that little worker between body and burial?

“Or porch of gnome, / Or some elf’s catacomb?”: is this something entirely supernatural? And if so, is it a porch–the place where something might currently be living–or a burial ground?

Is this poem about life, or death? And what is a cocoon, anyway? Sure, the caterpillar lives on as a butterfly, but the caterpillar self is dead (as is the cocoon dead organic matter after the butterfly escapes). What’s left of the original thing? Is the cocoon a reminder of the new life that’s about to begin, or of the old one–or the second death the caterpillar will experience when the butterfly, too, dies?

Spring magic

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XC
A murmur in the trees to note,
Not loud enough for wind;
A star not far enough to seek,
Nor near enough to find;


A long, long yellow on the lawn,
A hubbub as of feet;
Not audible, as ours to us,
But dapperer, more sweet;


A hurrying home of little men
To houses unperceived,—
All this, and more, if I should tell,
Would never be believed.


Of robins in the trundle bed
How many I espy
Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
Although I heard them try!


But then I promised ne’er to tell;
How could I break my word?
So go your way and I’ll go mine,—
No fear you’ll miss the road.

~emily dickinson

Today is the spring equinox. The robins are back. The sun is shining, and the world is coming fully alive again after its long cold sleep. Night and day balance on an invisible fulcrum. Anything is possible.

This is a poem about magic, about the possibility of the impossible, about the glorious intangible. Okay, it’s an Emily Dickinson poem, so it’s probably somehow about death, but I have decided that I am going to read this as a poem about faeries and how they are Real, dangit. You can read it however you want–“go your way and I’ll go mine,” as the poet says. “No fear you’ll miss the road.” It’s almost as if she’s instructing us to read this poem however we like.

That, after all, is one of the great beauties of poetry–its multiplicities of possibility, of meaning, its ability to be all things to all people. This May, I’ll be substitute teaching a couple of middle school English classes for a friend on maternity leave. I get to teach the poetry unit, and it’s the last lines of this poem that I want to take as my mantra, my teaching philosophy. There is magic in poetry, and teaching can suck that right out if it’s not done well.

The magic is there for each of us to find. Maybe we find the same magic. Maybe we don’t. But it’s there.

Visible

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XCII
To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature’s sentinels.


In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
To make me visible.

~Emily dickinson

It’s been a week, so for today, I’m just going to leave this here for you. It was a little sparkling breath of wonder for me on a busy and exhausting day that began at the hospital (everyone’s fine–scheduled procedure), continued with a trip to the vet (everyone’s fine but very expensive), and ended with the arrival of friends returning after decades away. So it’s been a good day, but also the kind of day when you just need to pause, take a breath, and indulge in a very small poem.

May you be visible in all the best ways.

Bittersweet blossoms

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LXVIII
As children bid the guest good-night,
And then reluctant turn,
My flowers raise their pretty lips,
Then put their nightgowns on.


As children caper when they wake,
Merry that it is morn,
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.

~Emily dickinson

Crocuses have begun peeping from the barren earth. Incongruously bright against the dead grass, they dot the brown with tiny firework-explosions of white and purple.

Each plant sends forth a single bloom, so when my newly ten-year-old son comes running with a minuscule blossom clamped between two fingers, I am lanced with bittersweetness. That flower is done, gone. My little boy, not so little anymore, still brings me the first flower he finds every spring.

Parenthood is like that, love laced with delight and punctuated by constant reminders that no moment is forever.

Riddles in the Dark

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XCVIII
It’s like the light,—
A fashionless delight,
It’s like the bee,—
A dateless melody.


It’s like the woods,
Private like breeze,
Phraseless, yet it stirs
The proudest trees.


It’s like the morning,—
Best when it’s done,—
The everlasting clocks
Chime noon.

~Emily Dickinson

After many sodden months, the March winds have finally arrived. They howl like wild things, like Grendel alone and friendless outside the mead hall. They sigh fitfully. They gust and caress, rant and hum through the bowing branches of the pines.

The local joke this summer when people complained about the wet weather was that it only rained twice–once for forty days, and once for thirty days. It’s been soggy here, the woods burgeoning with fungus, paths carved out by water. Autumn and winter were wet, too. Rain. Snow. Freezing rain. Sleet. Rain. Again.

At last the winds are here, and their cries are a benediction, better than a rainbow after flood. Gardens are beginning to dry out enough to till. The paths through the woods are no longer treacherously slick. Pearly songs burst from the throats of the little birds that fluff their feathers in the welcome sunlight.

I chose today’s poem because, in my edition of Dickinson’s poems, it’s titled “The Wind.” But each time I read it, I feel pulled farther away from that notion. Wind is like light. It is a dateless melody, it’s phraseless, and it does stir the trees. But other parts of this riddle-poem just don’t seem to work if the answer is really “the wind.” This is a poem I can imagine fitting neatly into Bilbo and Gollum’s riddle-contest. Just when you think you know the answer, the riddle makes a twist. Who would compare the wind to a breeze? What kind of clue is that?

We know that Dickinson didn’t title her poems–they were titled posthumously. In many cases, I have to wonder what the poem-titler was thinking. This is definitely one of those cases.

So what is she writing about? If I’d had to answer this one, I’d probably have had to throw on my invisibility ring and slip out the back way. I don’t know what she’s talking about. It’s the last stanza that really throws me–the notion that morning is best when it’s done. I like morning when it’s happening, but Dickinson seems to be using morning as a metaphor for something that’s best gotten through, gotten over with.

I have no answers for this one. What do you think?