Emily: A Letter

My Dearest Emily,

It has been too long! I’ve been thinking of you today and send my heartfelt apologies for not writing to you sooner than this, and for not letting you know what I remember — how much I remember! I do remember our girlhood, it is safe to finally say. So when I imagined myself dipping my pen into the blue glass ink decanter on my humble desk today, I let it drip and drip, so this letter and my little poem clinging here, might be given as a small notion of my thoughts of you, My Emily . . .

You never shunned what hung mid-Air — the strangest Blooms
Suspended like a Scar — its fair to say, or maybe even that of Evening
Star, while in your Room you smelled the Wood, and watched the sky, 
Your way was round, the place a Hood. You lingered there to breathe —

The Dappled Air — entranced with Dawn as much as dark Midnight — this — Corner like a tunnel where, you bore through rock, the “Rock of Ages, 
Cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee,’” stained with markings dark and Deep, All the while sustained by something like a melting music dripping 
From a low hanging cloud —

Of Dew, you wrote, when quiet fell and you could Listen far and wide — or too Close — beyond this veil of words, we laced back then and now — together in the Dark, we stitch, then plow and plant, the glowing Blank with deep dark Red,
A certain Heat to burn with questions, to kneel there, turn round, then settle,
In this Spot.

Dear Emily, my girlhood friend next door, I knew you always held a secret place, Up close and in your heart, where we could meet again — I’ve known this place Myself, when small, this tangled garden where we once played and sweat, our Dollies caked with dirt, still pretty to our Eyes, and later in our room folding

Threadbare dresses, in hushed Silence, even though the rooms beyond the Door, Were often crowded with the many urgencies of day, that could not alter or fix Our play, this secret wandering, blind sometimes, but listening hard, howling at The moon sometimes — swelling with scents of honey, anis, cream, and basket

Filled with gingered cakes, trays of flowers and poems, the Room all lit with Strange sparks — or drenched, In Sadness, which dwelled there too, hard Laments, closed, yet scented with Blue Hyacinth still wet after a sudden summer Rain, when seasons snatched us up, though we Did not cry — instead we scratched like hunger at a gate, you taught me how to Hunt.

Too late, is too much for you as well. The two of us, held on as I do now — Remembering, while some cruel Owner and his Entourage burst in, from
Somewhere uninvited. The intruding crowd is always noisy, and making — 
Rude remarks, while we sit still now, as then — quiet at the desk.

Then as the windows grow ice cold with frost and finally put on white — 
In spite of late summer thunders, so that when Winters come again,
We will huddle from the cold here, hanging on — bereaved, sometimes bereft;
But warming to the work, Emily, sweet Emily, you taught me how to Sew!

With thimble ready, I steady myself here, as you advised, to stay the tumult
Like a wave, with tossing wants, to wreck this, our Room. It was because
When you left me, Still within your Dream, until it seemed, our sisterhood
Was claimed, charmed and just in time, the clamor then subsided as we

Applied our craft to striking clear through wasted Hours, arriving finally
Here instead, as slow as anything can be, a greenish seed, deep pressed — 
To grow where even the recess is hard and small, but Music must escape,
The jailed province that some like us, inherit on the Wind.

Remember how the Grasses swayed in autumn Wind, and all the small — 
Things that die along away, with every season spent, undone — too high
To reach, we sometimes starved? You showed me how to find the Hut,
To shut the Door and listen as the clock unstruck, wound down.

Some painful hours oh yes, there were, and now these, hours of Affliction
Cadenced in between these idle moments, begging for release — 
You teased me too, like now, your tongue a better instrument than mine.
The waning place is always here, you told me so, whispering against —

My cheek, that all must fade, when what there hangs undone will — –
Wilt and dip, as birds do as they fall away from sky to meet — the graveled
Ground and smash soft feathers in a fist, closed as if to time, to all that is,
Closed you said, would one day open in its own time. This meager dish

Was all we had, but sharing made the table strong enough to hold — 
Our hands — our palms — and what there was that could be touched,
What felt our skins in darkness, what gave us this to make again.
You taught me how, and so as I call your name today, I sway inside,

With melody, the music in your name, Emily, dear Emily — who taught
Me how to listen to rough sounds beyond the wall, you who took me
With her when I called, so that I no longer felt alone — you spun as I
Watched a fragile lace of black, entwine to trace this — this of all —

Forgotten places where something once burned with Hollow mocking
Sounds — then broke into a Song, again, and yes, Again, the music held
Us as we took eachother’s hand — as small girls do when they — 
Turn and go, and go, and go away — while smiling. The Distance

Between the Then and Now is long you say, well yes — it is, and would you
Like to stay? If not I’ll carry on, my Cargo packed, the Sea all ready with
That wet Forever, that calls and calls the smallest things to Blossom or
To Crawl. We spent our childhood there its fair to stay, the mean digested

Golden, divested now of fairness, refusing the refusal like a slow fuse;
And so, our Room (this room) is now empty, but we know that it is There — 
Here, suspended for our lingering Glance back, to where it Snowed,
And where something loosened in the Wind, the warm and flowing afternoons,

Waiting just for this, just this — — Return. The churn all ready and well fed,
There is an unmade bed here too, I made it such, did I say? — a messy place to Take a nap and Dream again, so easy after shades are drawn. But I will 
Write again, I promise. But for now, I must bid you once again farewell.

Fare well — the Well — is ready too. My cup, oh my cup has overturned, to spill This draft of memory, a Wind Now fills the sails, tight and holding firm. Remember this, while I take my leave of our remembered island, the garden That we shared — see the yellow petals — over there, The bright green stem?

This Distance — oh dome of Sky to shelter us — stay –­– then go.

* * *

Please forgive the awkwardness of my verse, my mixing of metaphors and such. I haven’t written a letter in a very long time, and certainly have never written a poem quite like this, or quite as long as this one. You are surely my most treasured Muse — dear Emilie! I hope you will remember my telling you that I have had a distain for most frivolous “Amusements” because they lead so suddenly and so readily to a kind of “Anguish.” If this belated correspondence has “amused” you I hope not too much, and I hope it tempers any pain you have felt in my absence, to be sure, it has tempered some of mine — poetic anodyne.

Aff.

Caroline