Defying Emily
A poem by F.D.

Defying Emily
after Emily Dickinson’s “Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers”

The cold Virginia earth swallowed you eight years ago,
willow oak and fledgling redbud roots, awake and incensed,
snaked around your coffin, an invulnerable embrace. But
you’re not “Safe” in your “Alabaster Chamber” like Emily promised.

At first, I expected a strict adherence to the canons of visitation–
my cat communicating with something on the other side of the French
doors–finding pennies everywhere, so many that I can sculpt a copper
monument of you–white feathers floating down from the sky until I
eventually suffocate–furtive glances from brilliant red cardinals,
bending every limb on the ash trees in my backyard.

You defy traditional constructs, and I can never predict when or
where you’ll show yourself–but I feel your arrival when a brazen,
neon green dragonfly, with silver-veined, transparent wings
lands on my foot–a relieved, half-drowned bumblebee, I lift from the
water trough, inhales her first fuzzy, yellow-black belly breath—
a late evening bat, diving deeply, brushes a rubbery dark wing
against my cheek, breathes in my summer sweat mingled with Anais
Anais, and a firefly breaks free from a sparkle to blink iridescent code
only I can decipher–I’m Here–riding the tail of your world–
“scoop” your “Arc.”

About the Author:

F.D. lives in the southeastern United States, along with her husband, two cats, two dogs and an Arabian gelding. She writes about grief/loss and the restorative and transformative power of nature, as well as anything else that piques her curiosity. Her hobbies include anything horse related, reading and crochet. She has a poem forthcoming in Plum Tree Tavern.

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