Will There Really Be a Morning?
Dear Friends,
As Fall performs its play in the northern hemisphere, the leaves come out in their fancy costumes, applaud themselves, and leave the stage. It is a natural time to turn inward. We move indoors, we wear warmer clothes, we sit by the fire. We may also find it easier to turn inwardly indoors: to think, to concentrate, to entertain a sequence of understandings or imaginings right through to its happy provisional endpoint. The clarity of the sky and air can challenge us to a parallel clarity of thought and feeling.
Today we'll take an apparently simple Emily Dickinson poem, a spiritual poem, possibly a political poem (it was written in 1860), and workshop it as a meditative text. This means bringing more and more of ourselves to the process. We'll start by invoking some of the totality of our individual presence-systems, from body and ancestors to current daily life, world events, the natural world, and purely spiritual friends. Empowered by such reinforcements, we can let the poem open to us and open us.
Here's her supplication:
Will there really be a “Morning”?
Is there such a thing as “Day”?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?
Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Man from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called “Morning” lies!
Some pointers: Water-lily feet would be those that can walk on water -- a butterfly-like, bee-like, breeze-like, Dickinson-like hovering. Also very like the fellow who called himself "the bright and morning star." "Famous countries/Of which I have never heard" -- an odd phrase. Would she trust one of the invoked experts (Scholar, Sailor, Wise Man) ? There isn't a declarative sentence in the poem, only questions and exclamations; we'll try them out as assertions. But ultimately, how does she take her, how do we take our, pilgrimage to the morning?
wishing you joy,
Michael
