Jane Yolen - Sister Emily's Lightship
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2024-11-24
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SISTER EMILY’S LIGHTSHIP
by
Jane Yolen
I dwell in Possibility. The pen scratched over the page, making graceful ellipses. She liked the look of the
black on white as much as the words themselves. The words sang in her head far sweeter than they sang
on the page. Once down, captured like a bird in a cage, the tunes seemed pedestrian, mere common
rote. Still, it was as close as she would come to that Eternity, that Paradise that her mind and heart
promised. I dwell in Possibility.
She stood and stretched, then touched her temples where the poem still throbbed. She could feel it
sitting there, beating its wings against her head like that captive bird. Oh, to let the bird out to sing for a
moment in the room before she caged it again in the black bars of the page.
Smoothing down the skirt of her white dress, she sat at the writing table once more, took up the pen,
dipped it into the ink jar, and added a second line. A fairer House than . . . than what? Had she lost the
word between standing and sitting? Words were not birds after all, but slippery as fish.
Then, suddenly, she felt it beating in her head. Prose! A fairer House than Prose-She let the black
ink stretch across the page with the long dash that lent the last word that wonderful fall of tone. She
preferred punctuating with the dash to the hard point, as brutal as a bullet. I dwell in Possibility.
She blotted the lines carefully before reading them aloud, her mouth forming each syllable perfectly
as she had been taught so many years before at Miss Lyon's Mount Holyoke Fe-male Seminary.
Cocking her head to one side, she considered the lines. They will do, she thought, as much praise as
she ever allowed her own work, though she was generous to others. Then, straightening the paper and
cleaning the nib of her pen, she tore up the false starts and deposited them in the basket.
She could, of course, write any time during the day if the lines came to mind. There was little enough
that she had to do in the house. But she preferred night for her truest composition and perhaps that was
why she was struggling so. Then those homey tasks will take me on, she told herself: supervising the
gardening, baking Father's daily bread. Her poetry must never be put in the same category.
Standing, she smoothed down the white skirt again and tidied her hair--"like a chestnut bur," she'd
once written imprudently to a friend. It was ever so much more faded now.
But pushing that thought aside, Emily went quickly out of the room as if leaving considerations of
vanity behind. Besides the hothouse flowers, besides the bread, there was a cake to be made for tea.
After Professor Seelye's lecture there would be guests and her tea cakes were expected.
The tea had been orderly, the cake a success, but Emily headed back upstairs soon after, for her
eyes--always sensitive to the light --had begun to tear up. She felt a sick headache starting. Rather
than impose her ailments on her guests, she slipped away. They would understand.
Carlo padded up the stairs behind her, so quiet for such a large dog. But how slow he had become
these last months. Emily knew that Death would stop for him soon enough. Newfoundlands were not a
long-lived breed usually, and he had been her own shaggy ally for the past fifteen years.
Slowing her pace, despite the stabbing behind her eyes, Emily let the old dog catch up. He shoved
his rough head under her hand and the touch salved them both.
He curled beside her bed and slept, as she did, in an afternoon made night and close by the
window blinds.
It was night in truth when Emily awoke, her head now wonderfully clear. Even the dreadful sleet in her
eyes was gone.
She rose and threw on a dressing gown. She owed Loo a letter, and Samuel and Mary Bowles.
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分类：外语学习
价格：5.9玖币
属性：8 页
大小：32.26KB
格式：PDF
时间：2024-11-24
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