To Emily Dickinson

To Emily Dickinson

by Small Circle Big Circle

Sister,

you are to me.

Though I have never met you.

Nor have I ever heard

the sound of your voice;

nor held your hand into mine,

nor tasted the flavor

of your bread.

Sister,

you are to me.

The words you left behind,

hoping

they would be destroyed

one day,

feed me

day and night.

“It is not the words,” someone said

“but the power within them,

the light, the truth in them

is what gives them life.”

Your verse, 

my sister,

is

Alive.

O

so Alive!

It breathes the known and the unknown

of the universe.

It is a constant

reflection

of Being;

in your eyes,

always so perfectly clear and distinct.

You are a sister to me.

And though I have never met you

Nor heard the sound of your voice

Nor held your hand into mine,

You walk with me,

Side by side.

And your words,

yes,

feed me

day and night.

The bread

of my every day.

Love after Love by Derek Walcott

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Photo by small circle big circle

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.