I wasn't sure what to write about this morning, so I scanned the shelves and took down the first book I came across that included poems not under copyright. It happened to be The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. So I opened the book to a random page and thus discovered Em's Mysterious Instruction for Today:

Poem 1196

Emily Dickinson

To make Routine a Stimulus

Remember it can cease--

Capacity to Terminate

Is a Specific Grace--

Of Retrospect the Arrow

That power to repair

Departed with the Torment

Become, alas, more fair--

Oh, Em. Here you go again, starting out with a tidy little aphorism and ending up in what-the-hell craziness, all within the frame of 8 short lines. And of all the words not to capitalize!--look at power in line 6, coyly perched there in lowercase disguise. . . . You make me laugh and long to shake you till your teeth rattle. I know you invent this stuff on purpose to drive me nuts, yet I love you for it, yet I'm incredibly relieved that we merely correspond by poem and that you don't actually live in my upstairs bedroom.