What do you see these days?

by Elouise

This morning I picked up my small volume of Emily Dickinson poems. Almost immediately my eyes found a poem I commented on about ten years ago. I was stunned at how much it still speaks to me and to the chaos that seems to have enveloped us.

Here’s the poem, with my comments at the end. It isn’t an easy poem. But it seems nothing is easy these days no matter where we look.

Before I got my eye put out

Before I got my eye put out
I liked as well to see –
As other Creatures, that have Eyes
And know no other way –

But were it told to me – Today –
That I might have the sky
For mine – I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me –

The meadows – mine –
The Mountains – mine –
All Forests – Stintless Stars –
As much of Noon as I could take
Between my finite eyes –

The Motions of the Dipping Birds –
The Morning’s Amber Road –
For mine – to look at when I liked –
The News would strike me dead –

So safer – guess – with just my soul
Upon the Window pane –
Where other Creatures put their eyes –
Incautious – of the Sun –

Emily Dickinson, c. 1862
Published in 1995 by Shambala Pocket Classics in Emily Dickinson POEMS, pp 38-39

These days it’s difficult, if not impossible, to understand what is happening to us and to this world. It doesn’t matter where I turn my eyes. To look deeply into today’s realities is to face a kind of death.

Several weeks ago, I decided it was time to stop blogging. My health issues are multiple. I thought not blogging would help me. It didn’t.

So here I am. Again. I don’t pretend to see things clearly. I just know we’re in this together whether we like it or not, and that writing is good for my body and soul.

Praying this finds you grateful to be alive, with “just your soul upon the Window pane.”

Elouise

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 February 2024
Photo of male hummingbird found at montencateclegg.blogspot.com.