The Saddest Noise

[RSherman]

Today is the 20th anniversary of my step dad's death. I love the line in this Emily Dickinson poem "Between the March and April line". He died on March 31, so wouldn't that be between the March and April line? So apt!



Emily Dickinson
The saddest noise, the sweetest noise
1764

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise,
The maddest noise that grows,—
The birds, they make it in the spring,
At night’s delicious close.

Between the March and April line—
That magical frontier
Beyond which summer hesitates,
Almost too heavenly near.

It makes us think of all the dead
That sauntered with us here,
By separation’s sorcery
Made cruelly more dear.

It makes us think of what we had,
And what we now deplore.
We almost wish those siren throats
Would go and sing no more.

An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear,
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.




And this. My dad taught my sister and I to cook. This one breaks my heart.


Moment of Inertia

It's what makes the pancake hold still
while you slip the spatula under it
so fast it doesn't move, my father said
standing by the stove.

All motion stopped when he died.
With his last breath the earth
lurched to a halt and hung still on its axis,
the atoms in the air
coming to rest within their molecules,
and in that moment
something slid beneath me
so fast I couldn't move.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I am so sorry for your loss, my dear RSherman . . .

Losing one's dear father is a huge event.

These poems are wonderfully written; they portray the landscape of loss in a very poignant way.

I hope they have helped you.

[RSherman]

2. Thank you!

Yes, the poems help, especially the Emily Dickinson.

Funny story--I shared the Emily with a shop owner today. Her mother passed away just last week. The shop owner (Elizabeth) loved all the references to birds. Apparently, her mother had German measles as a child and her hearing was never quite the same. It is Elizabeth's prayer that her mother is in heaven and able to hear beautiful bird song.

[BigmanPigman]

3. My dad died suddenly on March 29 and I am still

heartbroken. Grieving is different for different people. I hate March 29th and that will never change.

[RSherman]

4. My dad died suddenly also

So sorry for your loss.
My dad died unexpectedly also. My mother came home from work and couldn't find him. He was lying in the snow down by the lake all by himself. No closure is hard.

[JudyM]

7. Ooohf.

So hard to wrap your head around that… so sorry for all of you…

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Given that she was born in 1830,

I'm completely baffled by the 1764.

[RSherman]

6. 1764

I had the same thought. I copied the poem from a website. Could it be a number assigned to the poem? I googled and found the following:

"Emily Dickinson did not number her poems. She didn’t give them titles.

My college anthology of American literature (1978) presented her work using Thomas H. Johnson’s numbering notations in his 1955 edition, The Poems of Emily Dickinson. He used a J. plus a number.

The Academy of American Poets uses the first line and a number for the Dickinson poem mentioned in Somewhere Among; “There is a certain slant of light” # 258. The Poetry Foundation uses the first line as a title and (320). Other anthologies use combinations or variations of the title, number and J. "