[891] A Doubt If It Be Us

Guest poem sent in by Connie Rockman <connie.rock@>

There is an Emily Dickinson poem that has been important to me for years,
not one of her better known poems, I think, but startlingly appropriate in
the wake of the tragedy . . .

A doubt if it be Us
Assists the staggering Mind
In an extremer Anguish
Until it footing find.

An Unreality is lent,
A merciful Mirage
That makes the living possible
While it suspends the lives.

 	-- Emily Dickinson

Written about 1864, perhaps in response to the horrors of the Civil War
. . . perhaps to reflect on some personal trauma . . . in her inimitable
way, Dickinson speaks from the deepest recesses of the human soul,
giving words to feelings that many of us find impossible to express.

Connie Rockman,
Stratford, CT