From my highest hill
I watched for Antares.
Brief would be his glimmer
Where the long line of mountains
Duped the horizon
With vague, rambling mist.
And I shall never know
If that was Antares’
Eye on the earth-line,
Or the gleam of a lantern
The wild poet carried;
For God who saw both
Only laughs when I ask him.
—Olive Tilford Dargan (1869–1968), Lute and Furrow, 1922
I am a poet, — though
I’ve yet to write a poem —
when my soul blossoms
and my mind goes free
when I finally let go of
the suffocating shroud
o’er the wildness of me
my beauty will spill out
the ink will overflow and
finally I’ll be able to see
through a sapphire lens
into the heart of infinity
I know I am a poet —
someday — I will be
but the earth hasn’t yet
shattered inside me
I have still only yet got
the seeds of the words
within me; I am learning
and yearning and earning
and living my way toward
being born into harvest
There’s a meteor shower
inside my brain —
stars shooting down
every bright idea
words burning out
before inking the page —
broken-hearted dementia
sleepless engulfing fog —
search and rescue crews
report every line gone
“I have a request to make of those who read Empty Shells. If any friend surmises he has discovered the author he will be courteous enough to keep my secret. I have left out a great many poems that would have betrayed my identity, and put in none that I have cause to fear. Why then publish? I have no right to count on a long life and I am not willing to be ‘edited, revised, and corrected.’ On the other hand, I feel towards my poems as many women do towards their weak children; and treasure them because if they were conceived in grief they healed my heart. After the first smart of a new loss was softened, next to writing my greatest comfort was reading; and I did not then seek great authors. Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe were naught to me: I sought minor Poets — of whom I dare hope to be one. Could I but be a like comfort to some simple, sorrowing hearts I should feel my life-griefs had not been in vain.”