but you spend this Sunday with me,
on the spring garden bench reading poems
from your small hand-sewn fascicles, never published,
but for here and now, where God
preaches – and the sermon is never long.
This poem recalls – and borrows lines – from Emily Dickinson, whose poems I was reading this morning.
Emily Dickinson,
poet of the interior life,
poems were written quietly in a room of her own,
often hand-stitched in small volumes,
then hidden in a drawer.
She died without fame,
only a few poems were published in her lifetime, and those anonymously.
All of the poems were later published
at first altered by editors or publishers according to the fashion of the day,
rather than in the unique style that Emily intended for them.
The volume I was reading is The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition
Writing the Day 