Prompt: Proof

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THAT I did always love,
I bring thee proof:
That till I loved
I did not love enough.

That I shall love alway,
I offer thee
That love is life,
And life hath immortality.

This, dost thou doubt, sweet?
The have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary.

Emily Dickinson

Today’s prompt: say you have to actually show the physical proof that you love someone. What would that look like? Tolerating the smell of an egg salad sandwich? Rewashing clothes in the washing machine, because they forgot to transfer them to the dryer again? Picking up a bundle of flowers on the way home?

ALTER? When the hills do

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ALTER? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.

Surfeit? When the daffodil
Doth of the dew;
Even as herself, O friend!
I will of you!

Emily Dickinson

The first thing I love about this poem is the enjambment, which is a fancy way of saying that I like the way the lines continue over the line breaks, especially after that first hard stop of “Alter? When the hills do.” We start off with a strong statement and a strong ending, and then the other three lines of the quatrain continue from line 2.

But the first stanza is telling us things that the speaker will not do: she will not alter, and she will not falter. She’s with you until the end, basically. Now, in the second stanza, she’s using the word “surfeit” as a verb–we know this because she’s continuing the pattern set up in the first stanza–and “surfeit” is not a verb that most of us use commonly.

According to a quick search, the verb means wanting to be done with something because you’ve done that thing too much. Again, the speaker is telling us something she won’t do: she will not get tired of the friend, just like daffodils won’t get tired of the dew.

I like this poem as a sweet nod to friendship. Will I ever change, and not want you as a friend? Nope. Will I ever be unsteady in supporting you? Also no. Am I going to get tired of you? That’s just ridiculous.

Still

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LII
New feet within my garden go,
New fingers stir the sod;
A troubadour upon the elm
Betrays the solitude.


New children play upon the green,
New weary sleep below;
And still the pensive spring returns,
And still the punctual snow!

~Emily Dickinson

My feet and fingers are itching to get in the garden. Right now, though, it’s a soggy mess–a mud pit churned by months of rain and snow. My seeds wait patiently in their packets–seeds are made of waiting–but I am chafing to put them in the earth.

Outside, birds are unleashing their spring songs. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flit of movement and turned just in time to recognize the little personage who burst away into flight–a house wren, little investigator of nooks, crannies, and perches, possibly seeking out a place for a nest. House wrens are wonderful busybodies.

The spring is certainly pensive at the moment, unsure whether it’s really here or not. Today looks like spring. The light looks like spring. The birds are singing spring–but just a few days ago, the world was covered in snow.

I want to give myself over to spring, like the birds, pour a full-throated song into the heedless air, but the memory of winter makes me pause. Spring is always there, waiting, beneath winter’s white blanket–but then winter is always waiting, too, deep in the earth, in the cool dark of caverns, its fingers itching and twitching to claw their way back up to the waiting world.

Prompt: I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—

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I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—
Life’s little duties do—precisely—
As the very least
Were infinite—to me—

I put new Blossoms in the Glass—
And throw the old—away—
I push a petal from my gown
That anchored there—I weigh
The time ‘twill be till six o’clock
I have so much to do—
And yet—Existence—some way back—
Stopped—struck—my ticking—through—
We cannot put Ourself away
As a completed Man
Or Woman—When the Errand’s done
We came to Flesh—upon—
There may be—Miles on Miles of Nought—
Of Action—sicker far—
To simulate—is stinging work—
To cover what we are
From Science—and from Surgery—
Too Telescopic Eyes
To bear on us unshaded—
For their—sake—not for Ours—
Twould start them—
We—could tremble—
But since we got a Bomb—
And held it in our Bosom—
Nay—Hold it—it is calm—

Therefore—we do life’s labor—
Though life’s Reward—be done—
With scrupulous exactness—
To hold our Senses—on—

Emily Dickinson

This is a long poem to say: we are so tired of doing so much. Aren’t you tired of doing so much? Doesn’t March feel so very much like February hasn’t given up, like its jagged hooked claws are raking over your visions of frolicking in the clover and covering this up with reminders that you haven’t taken out the trash, or pruned the rosebushes, or raked the dead leaves, or paid that one bill?

Today’s prompt: write a poem about all of the things you haven’t done, and how they feel about being unfinished.

Benediction and Badinage

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XCIV
High from the earth I heard a bird;
He trod upon the trees
As he esteemed them trifles,
And then he spied a breeze,
And situated softly
Upon a pile of wind
Which in a perturbation
Nature had left behind.
A joyous-going fellow
I gathered from his talk,
Which both of benediction
And badinage partook,
Without apparent burden,
I learned, in leafy wood
He was the faithful father
Of a dependent brood;
And this untoward transport
His remedy for care,—
A contrast to our respites.
How different we are!

~Emily Dickinson

It finally feels like spring is about to visit the Shenandoah Valley. The world still looks groggy and half-asleep, the grass dead, the leaves mulch on the forest floor. It doesn’t look like spring, but the air is beginning to carry that lightness that means flowers will soon be blooming, bees buzzing. Soon the world will come alive again, resurrecting from the muck of winter.

The birds’ songs have shifted, too. They sound different in the spring. There are new visitors, of course, swinging by on their northern migrations, but the birds that remain here through the winter sound different, too, as if they’re unleashing their most golden notes to meet the newly gilded light that pours across the mountain ridges as the sun sets blessedly later.

I had never come across this poem before, but I love it. It came just when I needed it. Life has been hectic lately–one kid in a regional competition, the other working on not one but two major projects at school within days of each other, animals due for vet appointments, humans due for dental appointments, no hope of a haircut in sight, fruit trees and grapevines in need of pruning before the temperatures set their sap flowing.

Life has felt overly crammed. It’s all good stuff, but there’s a heck of a lot of it. There’s a lot of racing around, not a lot of sleeping. I need to channel the outlook of the bird in this poem, his jaunty attitude, his ability to at once engage in benediction and badinage. He’s a parent, too, and of an entire brood. If he can do it–if he can sing despite his cares–then maybe I can, too.

Maybe we are not so different, after all.

Yellow & Gold

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This evening, as the sun still lingers above the sloping shoulders of the Alleghenies and the air is suddenly balmy, the world has turned to gold. Spring is finally coming.

Today’s post is a little bit different–instead of a response to an Emily Dickinson poem, we’re offering you two poems in conversation. One, of course, is by Dickinson; the second is by Robert Frost. Read them, mull over them, let them sit together and have a conversation. See what happens.

Dickinson’s short poem “Nature rarer uses yellow” seems meant to be followed by Frost’s famous “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Read them together and see what you think.

Have a golden evening.

Priceless

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LV
Perhaps you’d like to buy a flower?
But I could never sell.
If you would like to borrow
Until the daffodil


Unties her yellow bonnet
Beneath the village door,
Until the bees, from clover rows
Their hock and sherry draw,


Why, I will lend until just then,
But not an hour more!

~Emily dickinson

It’s daffodil season! Yellow blossoms spring like gold from the sleeping earth. Dickinson’s attitude toward flowers in this poem strikes a chord with me–I feel the same way about dewdrops brimming with sunlight. They’re more beautiful than diamonds, quivering and alive, and worth so much more.

What completely free, completely priceless natural phenomenon would you gladly share but not take a penny for?

Alone

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The wind tapped like a tired man,
And like a host, ‘Come in,’
I boldly answered; entered then
My residence within


A rapid, footless guest,
To offer whom a chair
Were as impossible as hand
A sofa to the air.


No bone had he to bind him,
His speech was like the push
Of numerous humming-birds at once
From a superior bush.


His countenance a billow,
His fingers, if he pass,
Let go a music, as of tunes
Blown tremulous in glass.


He visited, still flitting;
Then, like a timid man,
Again he tapped- ‘t was flurriedly-
And I became alone.

~Emily Dickinson

Pam: Is this really an entire poem about a gust of wind in her house?

Brenna: I think it is.

Pam: Emily.

Brenna: And, of course, the wind is a dude.

Pam: Emily.

Brenna: The wind taps like a tired man but then enters rapidly. I guess that’s the gusting? The wind lulls and then blows in fits and starts. That seems like a very March wind. My first question: how does one “hand a sofa” to someone?

Pam: Can I just say that you have got to be lonely as everything to be sad when the wind, your only visitor, leaves? Yes, she’s hitting us over the head with the “he is incorporeal” stuff.

Brenna: I love the description of his speech, though–“like the push of numerous hummingbirds.” And I like the reference to the glass instrument–is it the glass harmonica?

Pam: Oh, good question! I have no idea. I’ve never heard of a glass harmonica. I was thinking of water glasses, how you can fill them halfway and run your fingers around them rim to make them sing. But I imagine that you are closer to the truth! As always, I am wondering why the rhyme changes in the last stanza. “man/alone” disrupts the rather straightforward rhyme scheme in lines 2/4 of the previous stanzas (pass/glass, push/bush).

Brenna: Yes! That’s a glass harmonica! Benjamin Franklin invented it as a mechanized instrument, but it’s basically glasses. Okay, you have got to listen to one before we go any further.I am going to google right now.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQemvyyJ–gI just watched that. It’s gorgeous!!Isn’t it magical?I wonder if that’s what she’s referring to in the poem–it does sound like the wind!It’s gorgeous. I want this instrument in my daily life.Agreed.Back to rhyme scheme? Man/alone disrupts.Sounds about right.

Pam: Yep. It’s the nail in the coffin of “yes, I’m really alone,” which we can tell because the rhyme scheme is different–and there’s emphasis on the man in that particular rhyme scheme, so we’re left wondering about him, too.

Brenna: And “flurriedly.” Um. Emily. That is hard to say. And is it just me, or does “and I became alone” feel like a very weird way to put it? The contrast between the speaker “boldly” admitting the wind early in the poem, and the wind as “timid” near the end is interesting.

Pam: Yes! In the beginning she’s active–she boldly answers–and in the end she becomes alone, passive.

Brenna: Is she becoming like the wind? She isn’t alone until she knows she is.

Pam: I wonder if the conceit of this poem is what might happen if you thought you heard a knock at the door, but opened it to find only wind, and realized that you were lonelier than you’d originally imagined. Someone knocks, I’m excited because I think I have a visitor, I open the door–and it’s just the wind, and now I am definitely lonely.

Brenna: Yes. That seems spot on to me.

Pam: Boom. Poem cracked like a nut.

Brenna: You win! Shall we call it a day?

Pam: Let’s do.

An Emily Dickinson Herbarium

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“Whose are the little beds,” I asked,
“Which in the valleys lie?”
Some shook their heads, and others smiled,
And no one made reply.


“Perhaps they did not hear,” I said;
“I will inquire again.
Whose are the beds, the tiny beds
So thick upon the plain?”


“‘T is daisy in the shortest;
A little farther on,
Nearest the door to wake the first,
Little leontodon.


“‘T is iris, sir, and aster,
Anemone and bell,
Batschia in the blanket red,
And chubby daffodil.”


Meanwhile at many cradles
Her busy foot she plied,
Humming the quaintest lullaby
That ever rocked a child.


“Hush! Epigea wakens! —
The crocus stirs her lids,
Rhodora’s cheek is crimson, —
She’s dreaming of the woods.”


Then, turning from them, reverent,
“Their bed-time ‘t is,” she said;
“The bumble-bees will wake them
When April woods are red.”

~Emily Dickinson
My trees are waking up to spring.
A few days ago, they were absolutely riddled with soft, white blossoms. Now they’re giving way to leaves green as a luna moth.
Welcome, daffodils. Or, more correctly: goodbye, daffodils. They’ve been in bloom for over a week, and they’re already starting to die.
Welcome, irises. I dug these from a huge clump in my front yard at the end of last summer and planted them without much hope in the backyard.
I planted this native azalea last spring. It never flowered, but now it has rosy pink buds forming.
I planted these flowers in October, watered them maybe twice, and then left them to their own devices. Thanks for sticking around, violas.
And, finally, my absolute favorite sign of spring: my husband ran over this St. John’s wort last summer, thinking it was a weed. (It was not.) Cue much crying from me and a well-chastised husband. Now the plant is putting out new leaves. Thanks for sticking around. Thank you for trying to live.