I felt it shelter to speak to you. ~Emily Dickinson
I don't know to whom Emily was referring, but I know what she meant. You've been running through a rain, the drops getting larger, falling heavier, falling faster. The sky overhead is darkening quickly, the wind picking up and the trees twisting almost down to their roots with the force of it. You run faster, trying to outpace the p
Image via Wikipedia
ursuing storm, and suddenly, you see a shadow, you can barely see it because the rain keeps striking your face and you have to wipe it away. Closer, your hopes rise. Yes, it's a roof. Yes, there's a door. Yes, it's shelter. You rush inside, you're safe.
Not everyone can do this. There are those whose demeanor is as turbulent as the storm, whose interior is as fragmented as a marble dropped in boiling water and then placed in a glass of cold. The fracture lines form a beautiful crystalline lattice but when struck by another marble, it shatters like a wet plate slipping from your hands and striking the floor. In constant need, they can neither protect themselves nor another.
There are those who, like the house built with straw or sticks, can endure the sun but not the sunami. When the wolf howls the foundations shake. There is no basement deep enough in which to hide and like its owner, you fly for your life out the back door.
Then there's Emily's. The ones whose pillars go deep into bedrock, who've endured God knows what and God knows how, but they have. The ones who shed security like autumn leaves, who make you feel wrapped as though by the wings of an archangel, who seem solid because they are and now you are as well. The ones to whom we speak and it feels like something more than shelter.
It feels like home.
(Image of Hurricane Emily 2005 via )
I don't know to whom Emily was referring, but I know what she meant. You've been running through a rain, the drops getting larger, falling heavier, falling faster. The sky overhead is darkening quickly, the wind picking up and the trees twisting almost down to their roots with the force of it. You run faster, trying to outpace the p
Image via WikipediaNot everyone can do this. There are those whose demeanor is as turbulent as the storm, whose interior is as fragmented as a marble dropped in boiling water and then placed in a glass of cold. The fracture lines form a beautiful crystalline lattice but when struck by another marble, it shatters like a wet plate slipping from your hands and striking the floor. In constant need, they can neither protect themselves nor another.
There are those who, like the house built with straw or sticks, can endure the sun but not the sunami. When the wolf howls the foundations shake. There is no basement deep enough in which to hide and like its owner, you fly for your life out the back door.
Then there's Emily's. The ones whose pillars go deep into bedrock, who've endured God knows what and God knows how, but they have. The ones who shed security like autumn leaves, who make you feel wrapped as though by the wings of an archangel, who seem solid because they are and now you are as well. The ones to whom we speak and it feels like something more than shelter.
It feels like home.
(Image of Hurricane Emily 2005 via )
I recommended "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant" to my friend who was writing an evaluation her last week of CPE. She loved it.
ReplyDeleteEmily Dickinson had such incredibly profound insight. What a gift she was!
I'll bet she did! :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd Emily was something else, indeed. What a wonderful line!