emily dickinson in the summertime

a beginning day with rain - well it's more like falling humidity if that makes sense - not a true rain but the humidex has reached the point where something has to give and in this case it's the rapidly coalescing and just as rapidly dropping and then evaporating little droplets of water that my plants live for.

it's said that emily dickinson loved her flowers more than anything else, including her poetry. emily, despite (or perhaps because of), her insight and the rich internal dialogue that bubbled over into her poetry, was a very private person. born in amherst, massachusetts emily lived almost all of her life as a recluse in her family home there. she left home for only one year to study at mount holyoke - a liberal arts women’s college whose motto is: “that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace – psalms 144:12”. during the years after her return to amherst she made only a few trips away from home. she never married, and spent her life at home, writing poems and letters and receiving only a few visitors.

emily’s complete poems can be read here here. to lend additional colour to her writing i've melded in some of the flowers from the front of my home.


a something in a summer’s day
as slow her flambeaux burn away
which solemnizes me.

a something in a summer’s noon —
a depth — an azure — a perfume —
transcending ecstasy.

and still within a summer’s night
a something so transporting bright
i clap my hands to see —

then veil my too inspecting face
lest such a subtle — shimmering grace
flutter too far for me —

the wizard fingers never rest —
the purple brook within the breast
still chafes its narrow bed —

still rears the east her amber flag —
guides still the sun along the crag
his caravan of red —

so looking on — the night — the morn
conclude the wonder gay —
and I meet, coming thro’ the dews
another summer’s day!