To Miss Dickinson: A Note of Thanks

Thank you for your passion
You experienced life like the heart of a flame
Piercing in its brightness
Purifying in its heat
Carefully tended in the furnace of your soul

Thank you for your pain
Your grief, sharp as ferrets' teeth
around your heart
Death laid open and bare upon the table
No longer the old bogey of our nightmares--
But a kind and courteous friend
Come to ease our pain

Thank you for being more
than they ever dreamed you were
More than the reclusive maiden lady
More than the ghostly moth in white
You were wider, deeper, taller, stronger--
More than the sum of your parts
Refusing to be a sheep
in the pen built by expectation

Thank you for showing me the way
For allowing me to disregard the petty opinions
of those who don't know my soul

Thank you for following your own light
And giving me the courage to find mine

We would have been great friends, you and I
And though we never met
I will always hold you as a friend
In my heart