When I looked again, I knew who they were:  Emily, the spider, and me.

I don’t always care for her piety, but to my ear,  she is probably the best poet this country has produced.   What’s weird is that some of her best stuff is inches away from doggerel.  How does she do it?  It’s a mystery to me.

I suppose everyone has their own Emily.  This beautiful drawing is Colleen’s response to Why do they shut me out of heaven? Where I see spiritual despair, spiritual starvation, she sees Emily Rising, Emily Fulfilled, Emily the Beautiful.    Go figure!

And so, we come to Emily Dickinson, Queen of the Neurotic Chicks.  When life has been empty so many times it’s a so what, when every detail of daily life prosecutes and convicts, when your suffering is utterly uncaused, and therefore irredeemable, why then it’s time for Emily Dickinson.   With Emily, no moment may be unremarkable.  It is either a moment of ecstasy, a moment of rapturous communion with the immanent, transcendent and ineffable Presence, or it is a soul-searing indictment of one’s complete and utter failure.  Anything else is unthinkable.

We will sojourn with her again.  But for now, the poem illustrated above.  Or listen to Aaron Copland’s setting.

Why—do they shut Me out of Heaven?
Did I sing—too loud?
But—I can say a little “Minor”
Timid as a Bird!

Wouldn’t the Angels try me—
Just—once—more—
Just—see—if I troubled them—
But don’t—shut the door!

Oh, if I—were the Gentleman
In the “White Robe”—
And they—were the little Hand—that knocked—
Could—I—forbid?

Colleen sends a poem and a do-it-yourself mutant snowflake.

Ode To Snow…

Pristine white there is no sun

No golden photon to emblazen

Absolute all color pure reflection

It blinds my every rod and cone

Blue cup clutched I step into that light

Crunched beneath the waver of my boot

Leaving broken edges no less bright

Behind me

Rustling snow from every branch

Hardly waiting for my retreat

The brave ones take the chance

Cardinal red splashed

Black grey junco

Cluster at the feeder

Shards of yellow bill

Eagerly pecked between snowflakes

I stand, breath white on white

As

Seed hulls scatter at my feet

I ponder thus:

St. Francis never had a plastic cup

Nor plastic sack of seed

Nor heated room to venture forth from

Still – when I fill the feeder

No less wonder makes my moment

Free from that disgust

That drains the living not connected

By the bridge of life

To Life

L’Chaim

Olympia, by Edouard Manet.

Pretty brazen, this chick.

Any attempt would require, well, Olympian efforts of seduction.

But is she more brazen than the the Poet?

Manet’s Olympia
By Margaret Atwood

She reclines, more or less,
Try that posture, it’s hardly languor.
Her right arm sharp angles.
With her left she conceals her ambush.
Shoes but not stockings,
how sinister. the flower
behind her ear is naturally
not real, of a piece
with the sofa’s drapery.
The windows (if any) are shut.
This is indoor sin.
Above the head of the (clothed) maid
is an invisible voice balloon: Slut.

But. Consider the body,
unfragile, defiant, the pale nipples
staring you right in the bull’s eye.
Consider also the black ribbon
around the neck. What’s under it?
A fine red threadline, where the head
was taken off and glued back on.
The body’s on offer,
but the neck’s as afar as it goes.

This is no morsel.
Put clothes on her and you’d have a schoolteacher,
the kind with the brittle whiphand.

There’s someone else in this room.
You, Monsieur Voyeur.
As for that object of yours
she’s seen those before, and better.

I, the head, am the only subject
of this picture.
You, Sir, are furniture.
Get stuffed.

Have I had this Olympia?

No matter, Margaret has it in for me.

I, my maleness, my male gaze are the malefactor’s here.

But methinks the room a mite crowded.

The servant, this cold-gazed dame, myself,

Who else?

The painter, of course.  No scorn for him.  Hell,

If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have a poem.

None for Olympia, attended by her maid.

And to think, in this tiny room, with its bed,

Its easel,

Its artist,

His paints,

And a voyeur, no less,

We still have room, packed as we are, cheek by jowl,

For Madame La Poete.

Come in, come in, my dear.

The more the merrier.

Just don’t let on, my dear

That you were there, too.

Kind of like the blues, I suppose.