(Image of the Messianic Squirrel, Manette, WA at sunrise)
i
On the tongues of angels devils dance
The right words are made but not by chance
If the truth and sound should ever meet
We’d hear “it’s cheaper to let them sleep on the street.”
ii
The keening of youth wears thin in time
Like hippy power ties sold in eighty-nine
The passion disease is easy to cure
With pots of gold and rainbow lures
iii
Sleep tidy in peace is the lucky sin
God loves you more is how it begins
Luxuriate in false security long and well
And but once heed the toll of the bell
iv
And as one hypocrite tells another
“The fault lies with our fathers and mothers”
Yet seldom do parents concede
When devils dance on the tongues of their seed
Saragun Springs 
Leila
This poem inspired me to invent the phrase CRYPTIC CLARITY in order to describe the results of your Emily D experiment of reading her to see if she rubs off.
This poem sounds more like a marriage of Leonard Cohen and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, all of which makes it add up to being none other than LEILA.
I’ve found that there’s definitely a direct correlation between what a writer takes in and what comes out. And once you’ve finally gotten to the point where you’ve stopped imitating anyone else (even without knowing it) it means you finally know what to say and therefore how to say it: exactly. And that’s a great feeling.
Your work strikes fire yet again and Happy 9th Day of Septemeber!
Dale
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Hello Dale
Emily is fascinating yet relatable. She spent her entire 55 years essentially in one place. I have yet to see agoraphobia attached to her–it could well be that her one place was enough. Moreover, travel was not as easy in her time.
My mother was agoraphobic. After she finished marrying and divorcing everyone she went through a homebound period of nearly nine years. Literally. She stopped driving and would not leave the house for any reasin. And yet she was happy being the opposite of her former self–a person of wild mood swings who often locked herself in a closet with a butcher knife. She did suffer from depression and after months of medicauon (treatment mostly over the phone) she resumed a somewhat normal life.
I am a lot like her in that I do not travel nor wish to. I was able to work fifteen miles from home, but the prospect of going father terrified me. I have not been farther than twenty miles from home since the 1980’s.
That mystifies people but I see no problem. It suits me. I think I understand Emily because she saw winter shadows the same as I and she was content with the small vastnesses that are the world.
Small vastness describes the mind. Forever is everywhere and the only thing we really have to fear is turning on ourselves because we think we deserve to suffer because we cannot get on with being what we inaccurately deem socially acceptable.
Thank you!
.
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Damn WP went out on me! But the above says it all.
Leila
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This feels deep and meaningful, hiding behind jiggy wordage. Clever stuff that. The final verse particularly gave me pause. dd
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Hi Diane
I think children reflect their parents’ views and that most of the time they develop their own from what usually, I think, is a positive influence (as I am sure is the case with you and the generation before and after you). Unfortunately, the same goes for fools and hypocrites. Sometimes I feel that if I were to ask someone to tell me why they believe in a this or a that, their eyes will glaze and they will spit something out much like a Parrot. I might be naive, but I do believe that as individuals most people are all right. It’s when we are among numbers we tend to devolve.
Thank you!
Leila
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Leila
The list of great writers who never travel far in actual miles is quite long and includes not just Emily but also Walt Whitman, America’s other greatest poet of all time, as well as Emily Bronte. Samuel Johnson never left England and rarely left London. Shakespeare likely never left two small areas of England as well.
Henry David Thoreau famously said, “I have traveled much – in Concord.”
Lincoln never left American soil and lived in Illinois for most of his life except for the four years at the end.
Wallace Stevens also never left American soil except Canada once.
Never having traveled more than twenty miles since the ’80s is an impressive accomplishment!
Then again too, you’re in one of the most beautiful regions of the country, across from one of the coolest and best cities in the country, a city that can rival New Orleans for how cool it is.
The thing that often shocks people about me is not that I’ve never traveled far in actual miles (although I’ve never been out of America except a few times to Canada and Jamaica, and Mexico), but how much of my time has been spent ALONE. It seems scary, and maybe even terrifying, to all but a few.
But as with you and your never more than 20 miles since the ’80s, I don’t really see much of a problem there and even like to laud it as a good thing!
Thanks for sharing about your mother. She sounds like quite the character and I know personally about the mental health (or sometimes lack of it) aspect of things, in my own way!
Thank you!
Dale
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Hi Dale
While growing up I thought everyone else lived Leave it to Beaver lives, but I learned that is true about no one (except the legend that is Mr. Hawley).
It then becomes about generosity and understanding. The latter is nearly impossible, but the former is there for everyone.
Thank you!
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THE MESSIANIC SQUIRREL GLOWS WITH AN AURA AND HAS A HALLOW AS WELL!
Probably some sort of spiritual adept who spends a lot of time in the metaphorical wildernesses…
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