My Dickinson, My Cocoa

These last few days have been particularly cold...as cold as Dickinson...

The person I imagine Emily Dickinson to be is almost a shell of a person, blank and bright like snow.  I imagine her through her poetry.  That she was a recluse of sorts who usually dressed head-to-toe in white in her later years, seems to uphold this idea.  But her poetic gift also yields an image of a person not at all shell-like and blank, but rather robust and passionate...

Emily Dickinson's poetry deals with a variety of themes--love, spirituality, death and immortality, and nature.  The following poem by Dickinson is usually called "The Snow" (though she titled none of her poems).  It is a great example of a poem that rather straightforwardly describes a snowfall, but manages to evoke a sense of warmth as well.  I recall in its reading the way I often feel upon returning home after a cold day out, warmth from a cup of hot cocoa and the smiles of my children spreading and edging out the chill of the day...

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, --
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.
It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
On stump and stack and stem, --
The summer's empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.
It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen, --
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.