This popped up yesterday on The Writer's Almanac.
Hope all of you are well! Miss seeing you,
Catherine
At Emily Dickinson's House
by Carl Dennis
What I remember now of the rooms
Where she spent more than half her life
In self-imposed seclusion
Is her writing table, just two feet square,
Which made my massive desk at home
An embarrassment, an oafish boast
That the work I did there was monumental.
Her table: easy to move to a bedroom window
When she needed more light or another glimpse
Of the garden she loved to work in
When the weather permitted.
What a pleasure it must have been
To plant and prune in the afternoon
After a long morning at the table
Ample enough to serve as the field
Where she stepped out early to welcome Eden
Or rode alone to meet the enemy: the dark
That snuffed out her bright dear ones.
How much comfort she took in the hope
That the poems she didn't try to publish
Would cast a light one day is uncertain,
How much faith in a word as remote
And bloodless as posterity. I'd like to tell her
I've climbed the stairs in my heavy boots
To the room with the little table where once
She sat in her slippers, summoning her reserves
To charge "the cavalry of woe."
“At Emily Dickinson's House” by Carl Dennis from Night School. Penguin Books © 2018. Reprinted with permission.
Hope all of you are well! Miss seeing you,
Catherine
At Emily Dickinson's House
by Carl Dennis
What I remember now of the rooms
Where she spent more than half her life
In self-imposed seclusion
Is her writing table, just two feet square,
Which made my massive desk at home
An embarrassment, an oafish boast
That the work I did there was monumental.
Her table: easy to move to a bedroom window
When she needed more light or another glimpse
Of the garden she loved to work in
When the weather permitted.
What a pleasure it must have been
To plant and prune in the afternoon
After a long morning at the table
Ample enough to serve as the field
Where she stepped out early to welcome Eden
Or rode alone to meet the enemy: the dark
That snuffed out her bright dear ones.
How much comfort she took in the hope
That the poems she didn't try to publish
Would cast a light one day is uncertain,
How much faith in a word as remote
And bloodless as posterity. I'd like to tell her
I've climbed the stairs in my heavy boots
To the room with the little table where once
She sat in her slippers, summoning her reserves
To charge "the cavalry of woe."
“At Emily Dickinson's House” by Carl Dennis from Night School. Penguin Books © 2018. Reprinted with permission.
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