A Doubt If It Be Us -- Emily Dickinson

Guest poem sent in by Connie Rockman

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 . . .

(Poem #891) A Doubt If It Be Us 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