March 27, 2008

Do you have a certain line of poetry that captured you? That replayed in your mind over years? I look at my "personal library - a mirror of my soul" and see the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I opened this treasure one day and was immediately absorbed by a poem of the entrance of a loved one into a room where her lover had just died. The poem is very long, but here are some lines that I love...

The room is full of you!... (oh, the memory of entering my mom's bedroom and kitchen alone after she had died... - her cup and napkin still there... - of entering my dad's office with his wallet still setting there, and an envelope ready to mail - were those the last words he wrote?)

You are not here. I know that you are gone, and will not ever enter here again.

And yet it seems to me, if I should speak, your silent step must wake across the hall;

If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes would kiss me from the door. - So short a time to teach me life its transposition to this difficult and unaccustomed key!...

There is your book, just as you laid it down, face to the table, - I cannot believe that you are gone...

And here are the last words your fingers wrote...a simple choice; you did not know you would not write again...

You would have dropped your pen and come to me and this page would be empty...In this, "I picked the first sweet-pea today."

Today! Was there an opening bud beside it you left until tomorrow?...

I had you and I have you now no more. Aren't those lines beautiful? I can't find the exact line but she also states, "I see you everywhere, but you're nowhere."

That was poetry that I picked up randomly and in five minutes imprinted itself in my mind for now seven years. Our books - a mirror of our souls. I love that!

...I just heard a little bird! Smile at those little birds singing for you - they know your story, they keep your confidences, they are God's gift to us this spring! Go on with your day, making decisions that make yourself proud, taking pride in whatever, even mundane, tasks before you. Thank you for letting me enter your world on Thursdays! Susan


Latin for this week: ad meliora vertamur - Let us turn to better things.

Work Cited:

McClatchy, JD, Editor.Edna St. Vincent Millay Selected Poems.  New York. Library of America. 2003.