Reading Emily Dickinson’s “It’s all I have to bring today–” (# 26)

Today I read Emily Dickinson’s “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.”

One commentator says “this” is the poem itself: that helps me.

Emily’s poem could also be read allegorically, G!d speaking: This poem that you are feeling and you are just getting ready to write is all I have to bring today, this and my heart beside, this and my heart and all the fields and all the meadows wide…. This and my imagination, which is in this poem and my heart and yours….

—and my heart and all the fields and all the meadows wide and all the open spaces of all the places and all the open times—

And all the Breezes/Floating with our butterflies….

Transformation is about seeing. Transformation is about small changes. Transformation of the world is then in small things that I do now. The Little Flower and Mother Teresa were both onto something large: small things. This is not just changing a little corner of the universe, but is in fact the still point of the turning cosmos. This still point is less a place and more:

Transformation comes in
seeing
small changes
your “little” life

Transformation is
in the still point of the turning
large shifts in small bundles
an opening of the eye

Do the bees and the butterflies dwell in my heart? And fields, and meadows wide, and open spaces, too?

Breezes, Bees and Butterflies
Do dwell within my Heart?
All Fields, and all the Meadows wide,
Spaces open too?

This seems to be you, Lord: breezes, bees and butterflies, imagination wide as the fields the meadows touch and all that touches them, and feral too and so are we and wild.

Little things and large are seeded here. It is all real, as real as a seed and a child and an idea Wild.

You, idea Wild
You, our every Child
Feral Butterfly
Up on the Breeze
Bee among the Clover sweet
You, the Blood that feeds our Heart

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on June 23rd, 2007 | No Comments »

You can leave a response, or