Yesterday I opened my Shambhala Pocket Classics Poems by Emily Dickinson, and found myself in one of those wonderful moments where the right poem finds you at the right time, and meaning reverberates through you so strongly that you forget precisely where you are and what you’re meant to be doing and you focus, for a few moments, only on yourself and the poem. It’s probably a poem you’ve read before, but this feels like the first time you’ve ever seen it, and as you think about it, rereading it for maybe the third or fourth time, you realize that the boundary between “poem” and “self” may have vibrated into inconsequential blurriness. The poem has become a part of you, and whenever you read it again, you’ll think back to this moment, what it meant to you then, and what it means to you now.
I don’t expect other people to have the same reaction to this poem that I did, but it is a great poem for New Year’s and so I thought I’d post here. More very soon!
I could not prove the Years had feet —
Yet confident they run
Am I, from symptoms that are past
And Series that are done —
I find my feet have further Goals —
I smile upon the Aims
That felt so ample — Yesterday —
Today’s — have vaster claims —
I do not doubt the self I was
Was competent to me —
But something awkward in the fit —
Proves that — outgrown — I see —
~ Emily Dickinson
The Art of Reading 