A POEM FOR A SUNDAY
(Above: Hailee Steinfeld as a tattooed Emily Dickinson on the set of Apple TV+ series Dickinson)
Below is a photo of my own first tattoo. I got it on another Sunday back in 2012 as an early birthday gift to myself during that March. It was a commemoration of reaching a goal that concerned 90 days. Below is the photo I took of my arm when I took the bandage off. It consists of two lines from an Emily Dickinson poem.
When I got home however on that Sunday night in 2012 and took off that bandage, I realized that the word "IN" had been left out. The tattoo artist had misquoted Emily Dickinson even though I had written out the quote for him and he had even pulled it up on a computer screen. At first I was a bit, shall we say, upset. But then I took several deep breaths and said a prayer asking for serenity. Took more breaths. The prayer was answered. In a conjured calm, I came up with the solution you see above - which is, in itself, a summing-up sentence. I told the tattoo guy the next day to insert the feather where the word "IN" should be and write it atop it where it flutters there like Hope itself.
The lesson?
I am - like the tattoo - imperfect. I am - like the tattoo - unique. I am - like the tattoo - my own story. I am - like the tattoo - fixable.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers - (314)
by EMILY DICKINSON
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Poet Philip Jenks and his own Emily Dickinson tattoo - with a tribal halo. Photographed by Cybele Knowles in 2010 when Jenks was at the University of Arizona Poetry Center to appear in its Reading and Lecture Series. So here is a bonus poem this Sunday.
Dust Poem
by PHILIP JENKS
The idea was.
At least in theory,
Dust was a bad thing.
There was a bowl
Of it. At another
Point in time
The conclusion
Was reached
That everything
Was of it.
No season, no
Nothing to measure
To measure against
So no love or hate.
Left us without no
Moorings or so my
Father told me
Vanity tables of it?
Isn’t that what a vanity
Table is for?
What happens to
As its failings accrue?
No mission but to be clean.
Of itself.
But existing (time)
And problems there –
The problem of now
We are back here.
See the whole dust problem’s
No measure.
All’s dust, check.
All’s virtuous, check.
So why not live it up then?
And thus, YOLO etc. etc.
{These fok whirr pretty smart.
Thing is, even in
The dust bowl, the
Idea, a very American
One was that something
Wasn’t dust.
I wasn’t.
The Bowl wasn’t.
The dust wasn’t.
Since Ecclesiastes,
Been trying this one on.
(how’s that working out for you?)
One needn’t be geologically
Or for that matter
Psychologically trained to
Begin unpacking the diffident
And sometimes strained
Relation the nation holds with
All that is vanity.
(Above: The serenity of Steinfeld as Dickinson in Dickinson. “We all have moments with the dust,” the poet wrote, “but the dew is given.”)