Emily Dickinson - astral traveller
Emily Dickinson lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, in Massachusetts, in the middle of the nineteenth century, but really, she was never that far from us in space and time. Her poems unroll their feathers and ride across eternity as we sit and toil away here at The Vampire’s Wife, under her measured gaze and supreme guidance.
A Bird came down the Walk (328)
A Bird came down the Walk-
He did not know I saw-
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass-
And then hopped sideways to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass-
He glanced with rapid eyes-
That hurried all around-
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought-
He stirred his Velvet Head
Like one in danger, Cautious
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home-
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam-
Of Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.
Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886
A Bird came down the Walk (328)
A Bird came down the Walk-
He did not know I saw-
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass-
And then hopped sideways to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass-
He glanced with rapid eyes-
That hurried all around-
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought-
He stirred his Velvet Head
Like one in danger, Cautious
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home-
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam-
Of Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.
Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886