Poetry Friday: The Collected Works of Susan Ramsey

I apologize for not posting one of these in a while.  With the switch to the new blog I’ve somehow managed to consistently forget when Friday is.  For the full Poetry Friday round-up, please consult Mentor Texts.  In any case, from the pen of Susan Ramsey comes the following…

Emerson’s Eyes

[Emerson] now got his own future exactly reversed when he said,

"You may perish out of your senses, but not out of your memory or imagination."

                                                Robert D. Richardson

In the end, God cut Emerson a break.

That mind had been stoked nova-white for decades —

reading German philosophers, Hindu sacred texts,

to light the meadow where Waldo wrestled with

the angel of existence, demanding meaning.

No one’s word was good enough for him.

And he lived.  Any star can fill the sky

then fall in on itself, demanding darkness,

die of consumption, the Hellespont, the head

in an oven.  He made his name then kept on living

up to himself, refusing to relax.

His first wife died at nineteen, coughing blood.

His first son died at five.  Death circled him

like buzzards on a thermal.  He persisted.

Finally God allowed that brain to slip

free from the limits of language, like

a watch spring from the constrictions of its case.

The ideas stayed; names went drifting off.

He started tying labels onto things:

an umbrella became "what the guest leaves behind."

Look at the final photos, the portrait on

The Portable Emerson.  The brow is there,

the eagle’s beak.  Look closer, at the eyes.

As if through a backwards telescope

you see the nebula which was his mind

spiraling dreamily out into darkness

Poetry Northwest, Summer, 2000

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