ManicDDaily

After Dickinson (In Modern Times)

Because I would not stop for Life,
he did not stop for me—
Life not really a creature
of posed civility—

As I drove and drove myself
Life hopped on for the ride—
Though he’d himself no need for haste
He let me indecide—

We passed by schools, their playgrounds bare—
youth stop-starting ahead,
each of us scurrying plural 
to find our own instead. 

I didn’t see my horses’ heads
eyes round with darkling strain—
I did not marvel at the gleam
of steaming car or train.

I did not really see at all—
oh yes, there was my screen,
someone was doing something there
someone else too, it seemed—

Missing much before me like—
the cornice in the ground
that grave site sometime swelling—
that loss most surely found—

Till then, it isn’t centuries
it might feel not a year—
yet still I hunt some distant there—
although Life sits just here.

*****************
Drafty poem for April after Emily Dickinson, for Marian’s prompt on Real Toads about etiquette. The Dickinson poem that inspired it follows vaguely can be found here.  Drawing is mine (as are all on this blog unless otherwise identified.)  All rights reserved.

I’m not really satisfied with this one, but I am already a day late and need to leave for work!  Sorry I have been slow to comment.  It seems very hard for me to do the blogger/wordpress interface and a lot of the comments I did yesterday seem lost in some nether space.  Agh. 

This entry was posted on April 8, 2019 at 7:27 am and is filed under poetry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.