Day 8

 

Here’s Day 8 of your Emily Dickinson practice 🌿

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Poem 1

“The Bustle in a House” (Fr1108, J1078)

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –

Note: Dickinson distills grief into domestic metaphor: the bustle after death, sweeping and putting away. But the “putting Love away” is only provisional—saved until eternity. A chilling and tender compression of mourning.

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Poem 2

“I cannot live with You –” (Fr706, J640)

I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death’s privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’ –
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –

They’d judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You saved –
And I condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

Note: One of Dickinson’s great love poems, though it denies fulfillment. She imagines all possible unions—life, death, resurrection—and finds them impossible. Love here is absolute but barred by cosmic conditions.

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Poem 3

“A Light exists in Spring” (Fr812, J812)

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay –

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

Note: Dickinson’s eye for seasonal light. The spring glow is unmeasurable by science, but felt. When it passes, she compares the loss to commerce intruding on sacredness. The everyday turned into a sacrament, then gone.

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✨ Practice suggestion:
Hold the paradox of today’s set: loss in love, loss in light, loss in life itself. Instead of resisting, notice how Dickinson names them precisely and still makes them radiant. Try describing something transient around you in her manner (light, sound, gesture).