Storm: a prompt

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IT sounded as if the streets were running,
And then the streets stood still.
Eclipse was all we could see at the window,
And awe was all we could feel.

By and by the boldest stole out of his covert, To see if time was there.
Nature was in her beryl apron,
Mixing fresher air.

~Emily Dickinson
Image via Pexels.com.

Today, a prompt, inspired by Dickinson’s mastery of language. In the vein of the poem above, write a description of a natural event without naming the event itself or using any of the words typically associated with it. Dickinson manages to convey the noise, chaos, and finally the dissipation of a storm without ever using language we associate with storms (dark, stormy, tempest, rain, thunder, etc.). See if you can do the same.

A spider

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A spider sewed at night
Without a light
Upon an arc of white.
If ruff it was of dame
Or shroud of gnome,
Himself, himself inform.
Of immortality
His strategy
Was physiognomy.

~Emily Dickinson
Image via Pexels.com

I just want to take a moment to appreciate the quirkiness of this poem. I love the notion that a spider might be weaving a garment of some kind–a ruff for a dame, a shroud for a gnome. I incline to the latter. What kind of dame is going to wear a spiderweb ruff? A gnome, on the other hand–this is totally plausible.

I love these little moments when Dickinson’s sense of whimsy triumphs. It makes me wonder how she experienced the world every day. I had this notion of her, when I was a student, as this incredibly depressed, tortured soul. That’s what we were taught to think. But she also had a fantastically quirky view of the world. She saw magic in the ordinary. I don’t think we can celebrate that too much.

Mushroom

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The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants –
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot

As if it tarried always
And yet it’s whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay –
And fleeter than a Tare –

’Tis Vegetation’s Juggler –
The Germ of Alibi –
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie –

I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit –
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer’s circumspect.

Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn –
Had Nature an Apostate –
That Mushroom – it is Him!

~Emily Dickinson

Image via Pexels.com.

Dickinson is right about so many things. The mushroom really is “the elf of plants” (even though, of course, it is not a plant because Science). It appears overnight as if by magic, erupting silently from the humus. A mushroom has a kind of presence–it is solid, architectural, and where a mushroom springs up, it seems to irrefutably belong.

Yet “it’s whole Career / Is shorter than a Snake’s Delay.” Dickinson tells us that the grass is pleased by the interruption of the mushroom, but then goes on to argue that it is Nature’s unbeliever, that it is the one face Nature could condemn.

I wonder how much Dickinson really understood about mushrooms. Did she know that they spring from decay, that they are the unheimlich little denizens of the forest floor who, like the vulture high overhead, transmogrify death into life, decay into vitality and beauty?

An awful tempest

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AN AWFUL tempest mashed the air,
The clouds were gaunt and few;
A black, as of a spectre’s cloak,
Hid heaven and earth from view.

The creatures chuckled on the roofs 5
And whistled in the air,
And shook their fists and gnashed their teeth,
And swung their frenzied hair.

The morning lit, the birds arose;
The monster’s faded eyes 10
Turned slowly to his native coast,
And peace was Paradise!

~Emily Dickinson

Your prompt: taking a cue from the Myth, describe a natural phenomenon in monstrous terms. Happy writing!

The awful door

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I YEARS had been from home,
And now, before the door,
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine 5
And ask my business there.
My business,—just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near; 10
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced, 15
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there. 20

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.

~Emily Dickinson

This is a poem about the fear of returning to a familiar place after a long absence, of course, but what my imagination has snagged on is line 15. “Who danger and the dead had faced”?? Who is this speaker? Emily Dickinson, Vampire Hunter?? She most likely means it in a much more prosaic way, but it’s still an intriguing line. There’s a whole mess of stories behind that line. What dangers has the speaker previously faced? What is so terrifying about facing the dead, especially if they’re just ordinary dead people and not zombies?

I have admittedly strayed down a quirky path with this one, but that line feels like such a tease. There is a lifetime of mystery implied by that line. All kinds of things we’re not allowed to know, because they’re not particularly germane to the message of the poem.

But it’s October, and I have spooky stuff on the brain, so I’m going to have fun imagining what the poet has left out.

Hunting season

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THIS merit hath the worst,—
It cannot be again.
When Fate hath taunted last
And thrown her furthest stone,

The maimed may pause and breathe, And glance securely round.
The deer invites no longer
Than it eludes the hound.

~Emily Dickinson

This one is eluding me right now. I *think* she’s saying that when you’ve experienced the worst, then you get a respite. I am really not sure. The combination of 6:30am and a weekend of two kid slumber parties is not helping me out.

I chose this one for the deer and the hound–a break from ghosts and wandering spirits. Hunting season has just begun here in the rural South. In one way or another, a lot of folks have deer on the brain.

We don’t hunt, though we have a lot of friends and family who do. Our closest approximation to hunting is checking the trail cam we keep in the woods behind our house. Usually there are several pictures of deer, perhaps a raccoon or two, and a bunch of random tree pictures probably triggered by the wind in the branches or the flight of a passing bird.

Last night, though, we checked the latest set of images and found three pictures of bear cubs. We geeked out pretty hard over these. Baby bears are stinking adorable. Their noses and heads are out of all proportion to their little bodies.

It was magical to see them, to know that these huge creatures are moving along the paths we walk daily. However, I now have cause to fear a different kind of hunting. I think it’s time to go batten down the beehives……

Ghost story?

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THOUGH I get home how late, how late!
So I get home, ’t will compensate.
Better will be the ecstasy
That they have done expecting me,
When, night descending, dumb and dark,
They hear my unexpected knock.
Transporting must the moment be,
Brewed from decades of agony!

To think just how the fire will burn,
Just how long-cheated eyes will turn To wonder what myself will say,
And what itself will say to me,
Beguiles the centuries of way!

~Emily Dickinson

I *think* this is a ghost story–sort of a surprise ghost story that reveals itself in the last line. The speaker is longing to be home, anticipating the welcome she’ll receive.

In the first stanza, it sounds as though she’s been gone for a long time–“decades of agony.” This is still logistically believable. Maybe she’s been gone a really long time, and will show up when her loved ones are least expecting her arrival, years after they’ve given up on her return.

It’s only in the final line of the poem that we begin to realize what’s really going on here. She’s been absent not just for decades, but for “centuries of way.” Is she talking about arriving in heaven? The little details of the poem seem more homely that what we might expect of paradise–the eyes of her loved ones turning to see her, unexpectedly; the fire burning in the hearth. Because it’s spooky-month, I’m going to read this one as a tiny little ghost story about a lost spirit wandering the universe, striving to get back to those she loved in life.

Death vs. Ozymandias

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Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –

~Emily Dickinson

What to say about this one? It’s perhaps the most Emily poem of them all. Death is courtly, measured, unhurried. The speaker seems not unhappy at the prospect of her own earthly demise. And the poem ends on “eternity,” on an open vowel.

Rather than belabor this one, I’m going to set next to it another on a similar subject, with a similar ending tactic, so they can chat. The open vowel on the subject of death and forever calls to mind Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” While Dickinson’s poem is vastly more personal, it seems they have more than a few things in common. I’ll let them talk it out.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

truth // beauty

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I DIED for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed? 5
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms, 10
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

~Emily Dickinson

This is another of my favorites. There’s something beautifully macabre about the notion of two dead people striking up a conversation, finding in death a kinship. This poem is ultimately about my favorite subject of all, which is connection. The dead characters in the poem recognize their likeness, and proceed to converse as long as possible, “Until the moss had reached our lips / And covered up our names.” The similarity between the two continues through death into oblivion–both are alike in the reason they died, and they simultaneously become forgotten.

There is so, so much going on here–whole papers on death, obscurity, connection, the nature of truth and beauty…..I could ponder and write about this one for days. However, this poem very obviously would like to have a conversation with John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” so I’m going to leave them alone to talk it out.

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

~John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Good-by to men

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A TRAIN went through a burial gate,
A bird broke forth and sang,
And trilled, and quivered, and shook his throat
Till all the churchyard rang;

And then adjusted his little notes,
And bowed and sang again.
Doubtless, he thought it meet of him
To say good-by to men.

~Emily Dickinson
Image via Pexels.

Here’s the first of our October graveyard poems. There will be quite a lot of them because, you know, Emily Dickinson and all. This one is really more charming than spooky, though–the little bird, proud of his song, singing off the departed human. Leave it to Emily Dickinson to write an adorable poem on the subject of death.