Lapping the Miles

That last blog was hard on me for some reason. It was like every time I rewrote it I found more typos, more bad transitional ideas, more disordered thought, and more corn pone. Dang, this blogging crap is harder than it looks.

So for this one I wanted it to be fun. Here's one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems. Go ahead; sing it to the tune of "Amazing Grace." You know you want to.

I'll refrain from explicating it for you (you're welcome) but I will say that when I taught it in grad school, not one out of 30 eighteen to nineteen year olds in Freshman English would admit that they'd ever heard of the word 'docile' before.

:o

That goes a long way in explaining how G. Dubya Bush got elected twice, though.

One of the reasons I like this poem is that the train can symbolize God. Poetry people generally hate when you find God in Dickinson's poems, because it makes the top of their heads explode. But what can I say? I'm just that kind of rebel. Applying the words "docile and omnipotent" to God, blows my mind.


I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop--docile and omnipotent--
At its own stable door.