🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away…
I DWELL IN POSSIBILITY—and the space we give it in our lives. 🌿
🌻 I dwell in Possibility
A fairer House than Prose,
More numerous of Windows,
Superior of Doors.
Of chambers, as the Cedars —
Impregnable of eye;
And for an everlasting Roof
The gables of the sky.
Of Visitors — the fairest —
For occupation — this —
The spreading wide my narrow hands
To gather Paradise. 🌻
—Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
Windows, doors, and a roof made of sky
🪴 What I love about this poem is the space it gives to imagination.
Windows 🪟 through which we might see differently, try another perspective, become more aware. And with greater awareness comes greater choice.
Doors 🚪 opening onto something we haven’t yet explored—a promise of adventure.
A roof made of sky 🌅—limitless, connecting us with something larger than ourselves: nature, the spiritual, the divine.
Dickinson is writing about poetry, imagining it as a house more spacious than prose.
Life’s twists and Poetry’s bends.
🌱 You see, prose is ordinary. Straightforward. Direct.
It’s our usual way of writing or speaking, with standard grammatical structures, regular sentences and paragraphs.
And there is great value in the ordinary, straightforward, and direct.
But life is rarely ordinary, straightforward, and direct.
It takes unexpected turns.
It twists.
It bends.
It holds surprises in corners.
🌱 Just like poetry.
Poetry is playful.
It flirts with rhythm, beats, metres, and rhyme.
It is bendable—phrases cut
in half, sentences
broken mid-way,
words
placed
individually
on
a
page.
This can be destabilising, but it also opens up a space of freedom, imagination, creativity—a space of Possibility.
Places to explore, places to linger
Perhaps that is why I turn to poems myself:
🪴 They give me room to linger with a question, without having to answer it straight away.
I imagine the “fairest” visitors as us, the readers, bringing imagination, sensitivity, and patience into the poem.
Poems are not puzzles to solve.
They are places to explore,
to linger in,
sitting idly with a word, an image, an unusual phrasing.
🪴 Often times I see clients trying to force life into a set of “prose”—when, in fact, life is more like a “poem”, requiring space for imagination and exploration.
A little room for what we cannot yet see
Earlier this week, I shared how exploring another career helped me find my way back to HR. I returned with new experiences, relationships and a clearer understanding of what mattered to me.
🪴 Not every possibility needs to become a plan. Some help us see our present life differently. Others invite us to open a door.
For me, this poem is an invitation to stay curious—and to leave room for what I cannot yet see.
📌 Perhaps there’s a question in your own life that you keep coming back to.
If so, you don’t have to know where it will lead to give it a little space.
🦋 Happy Weekend everyone! 🦋
With love,
Dina 🫶🏽
Image of me in Valencia, on an impromptu walk to Torres de Serranos
Resources:
- Read Emily Dickinson’s full poem at: https://poets.org/poem/i-dwell-possibility-30
Source: Academy of American Poets - This week’s song 🎶 is INTO THE MYSTIC by Van Morrison. A little music to accompany the wandering.
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