Emily Dickinson,2 (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

perhaps she raised her small jeweled flags of words
in a stiff breeze so that the bees and flowers
the sprightly trees were confounded at first
and the red clover
in the vast meadows she lived in, meaning her soul.
and the stars over New England sighed on being told
by distaff cherubs
she is beyond you now O seraphs.
as for men on earth, who knew that she was scarcely here
an inhabitant at all
except as a gentle anomalie and almost as out of sight
as the ends of being barrett browning might have said.
in commiseration, if she could have.
now her self-sown flags are planted in eternity and they
stream on
transmogrified not a little, condensations so intense.
and sometimes in our midst; while reading her
we almost hear, we think her sherry voice and clear and
a cooling breeze enters our room in dusty midsummer
never minding about the unfinished housework
and we who have not yet died
neither for truth nor beauty yet settled in our tombs
we still abide and
may still aver and aver with her
toward which path for us, as well
the implacable mystic horses heads are slightly turned.

mary angela douglas 28 january 2022; 21 march 2023