When You're Sick, Look to Emily Dickinson

Driving from my doctor's office to the pharmacy to pick up my antibiotics for a lovely upper respiratory infection I picked up in Florida last week, I happened to hear Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. I love the radio spot, probably as much for Keillor's voice as the literature he showcases. Today, he read a poem by Emily Dickinson, and, in the infection weakened state that I've existed in for the last four days (Yeah, I know, guys are wimps. Quit whining. Trust me, I've heard it all, but I have the mucus and infection to prove my point, so there!), the poem hit home. Dickinson, while not a huge favorite of mine, focuses on the abstract in such interesting ways. She seems to have the ability to cut to the core of the matter and reveal it in startling ways.

Nothing new there, no major glimpses of literary criticism, just a cool poem for this raw, rainy, windy day in upstate New York.

I was saddened by the deaths at Virginia Tech., as well, as I'm sure we all were. It seems that this poem resonates within the grief I feel for those families, too. The loss of a child has to be staggering, and is one experience I pray never to experience.

Oh well, here it is:

It's all I have to bring today (26)

It's all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget—
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Poetry should do that, though, shouldn't it? It should distill the nuances of human experience into a compact form. It should capture the essence of the pain and joy and love that we experience and present it back to us so we can learn from it. Some days, like today, all I have to bring is my heart and all the fields.

And some days that just has to be enough.