after starting the engine and
gloves on, turning the heater down
once you’re on the road,
I wake by the time you are there,
thirty miles down the freeway where
you teach another day and drive
all the way back where I am not
waiting, I am nowhere, not here
nor there. I keep scribbling, hearing
actual voices around me,
curious why I was led here
to her house. All the others knocked
on her door, read dust in the air
and listened hard to the silence
whip the wind into dust devils
in no country you have come to,
though still you hear rivers flowing
and see the waterfall falling,
and say what there is you feel here
or you die too soon, you give up
but why when you have all the snow
and ice New England has to give.
(24 March 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
That certainly rings a bell for us this year, Floyce. I think you'd be surprised what an institution they've made of Emily Dickinson's (and Austin's next door) home.
ReplyDeleteThanks for encouragement, Bob. I doubt I'll get back to Amherst to see it as it is now. With you there, at least my spirit will be capable of imagining what once I could only see (and usually blurry-eyed of course).
ReplyDeleteThanks for encouragement, Bob. I doubt I'll get back to Amherst to see it as it is now. With you there, at least my spirit will be capable of imagining what once I could only see (and usually blurry-eyed of course).
ReplyDelete