I wish not to be Emily

In the homes that are orchestrated with hammers and nails,

People long for tiny smiles in pines and oaks.

A multitude of tender flowers, veils running through rails,

And apples bowing down by weighty boughs and rocks.

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Photographs. Mechanical reproduction of our homes covered in rust.

Paint me in the stars; the photographs I heard are electronic dust.

I write copies of copies. Imitating the world’s imitation.

Tell nature, I long for inspiration.

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In the shadows that are cast over homes, I am getting old in my artsy barn;

Love passing me by or coming with slow strides? When the sun burns, why am I incessantly drawn?

We are selling words like overgrown vegetation.

Poetry like a flower grown wild. Stories running slow with agitation.

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When I am an old woman. I will wear a funny hat—nothing sly.

I will laugh with an open mouth. Wearing my grey hair like a diadem of days gone by;

Striking definitions in a single game of roulette.

For definitions in my world, they are swelling like autumn’s gourd and its swelling silhouette.

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I have not stopped by the woods on a snowy evening.

Nought have I clung to life on a ship like the captain leaving.

Yet, I have sat on my own saddle and wrote my own shades of moon.

And when death stops by, I’ll wish not to be Emily—but my own name and tune.

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Write, paint, build, and mend.

Mend, nurse, sing, and lend;

Lend— thine own stories. Anvil and a hammer. A hammer and a nail.

And gradually, trees and flowers. Pine and oaks. Maple leaf on the sandalwood board — a sweet taste of holy grail.