I Would Have Written To You Emily (a poem)

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I Would Have Written To You Emily

"She settled into a quiet pattern of life, seeing fewer people and drawing gradually into seclusion"
(Thomas H. Johnson, Emily Dickinson's Poems)


"This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me - "
I would have written to you Emily.
And more if you had wanted.

I would have called to your window
from the street below,
coaxed you from your room
with flowers or a ladder,
flopped you over my shoulder
and hauled you to the ground,
to the city
or the country
in a carriage
where we would be free

from Verse
and what's worse -
with no rhyme or reason
("that's treason!")
we would Smash
convention and Dash
through thyme & clover
over and over -
wreckless & breathless Fun -
letting the meter Run.

You would have let your hair down for me Emily.
Until I tucked you in
with pad & pen
to "Judge tenderly - of Me"







(from the chapbook trying to unravel something, anything, 1998)


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