I’m going to stray just a little bit from the formula here and offer two poems that I think are very relatable right now. They are from Emily Dickinson, the master of brevity, and I think they sum up what a lot of us are feeling right now. (At least, they do for me.) And with that I’d like to give you Dickinson’s Coconut Poundcake recipe. This is actually widely available on the internet, after it was included in an exhibit on Dickinson at The Poet's House in New York City a few years ago. But it went so perfectly with the poems, and it is an older recipe, so it hits the “historical” button; I think it is nice to put all those things together here.

So, read some poems and have a piece of poundcake. I hope you are all healthy and able to find a universe in your small space right now, as Emily advises.

Scroll to the end of this entry to see more poems that offer hope and strength.

In the poem below, I Dwell In Possibility, I think (and of course you may disagree) Dickinson is saying that her poetry and her imagination give her greater freedom than writing in prose, and also more than any physical place. Famous for her reclusive lifestyle, Dickinson found creative freedom right where she was. She was able to see paradise by looking through the frame of her hands, and through her poetry she was able to soar up through an everlasting roof and look through many windows. And invite in her visitors, the readers- you, gentle reader!

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise--–

In Faith is a Fine Invention, Dickinson says that it’s best to rely on science in an emergency. Whatever your feeling on the mixing of science and religion, I think that you can agree that her short, limerick- like lines here are humorous- they gave me a chuckle after I watched the nightly news today.

“Faith” is a fine invention

For Gentlemen who see-

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.

Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Poundcake

1 cup coconut (I had sweetened coconut in and it was fine)
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar (or, two teaspoons baking powder)

I just followed the usual procedure here for a pound cake. Creamed butter and sugar, added eggs, then milk. Then the coconut, and finally the flour which was sifted with the rising agents. I used a loaf pan. In my oven this worked at 350 for about 30 minutes.

And I happened to have a pretty English plate to put it on.

And a few more lovely words by various writers:

—The Pause by Theodore Roethke

I have walked past my widest range,
But still the landscape does not change.

The branch that scrapes across my face
I once saw from a distant place,

But never closer than a mile.
I lean against its bark awhile.

The last worn wheel-ruts disappear.
Rain-beaten rocks lie sharp and clear.

My eyes are used to sights like these:
I stand between familiar trees.

Two wind-blown hemlocks make a door
To country I shall soon explore.

—A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

—Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.