Ode to Emily Dickinson

I.

I too run sick of silences, still language,
      the long take of shadow
seen on house, tree, and bush, sun’s maze
      (heat, arc, dip, and age), eye yoked
to the tender ease of home.

Given: a poem is always confession,
            the mete end always both tease,

concession. (I am more
than this I bleed.)

Entered, the world is a jail (isn’t it?)
      hooded, small. Beaten,

we burrow.

II.

Arrest of the heroic: to sap that hue
or thrust in sounds of the quick...

You strove to tell them
(but handed the moment, the world posed)

then hid and threw them fewer, your meteors,
dots tethered (my term,
my error) to the jutted edge of day.

(Ah, your glint I envy most...)

The wisdom is simple, but varied.
It’s won
by reaching down.

_ The poem is an anagram of Emily Dickinson’s poems # 241, 441, and 475.


Mike Smith | Mudlark No. 30
Contents | Folksong