"A blue and gold mistake",
Wrote Emily from inside her room,
A self-inflicted tomb,
About a path she could not take,
Into the month of June.
Let others stroll beneath its cerulean sky
And thank the sward, on which they lie,
A lunging into voluptuous play,
Yet blinded to the rushing by
Of sultry month and jovial day.
Did the poet’s being kept apart
From worldly joys well-made,
Or from crystal pools and glaucous glades,
From brilliant sun that fashions shade,
Embitter her admiring heart
To look askance at anything that fades?
Did she not care that
One month, though doomed to end,
Was also made to reappear
After the long march of winter’s year
As the sun came round again,
To loose us from our unlocked pens?
This was inspired by Emily Dickinson's assessment of June as a mistake in her poem "These are the days when the birds come back". I imagined I was writing to her, perhaps reading it outside her window, trying to cheer her up a bit by reminding her that changing seasons are not all bad--that the month of June is not only joyous, but reappears.