Charlotte Brontë in Leeds Point
From her window
marshland stretched for miles.
If not for egrets and gulls,
it reminded her of the moors
behind the parsonage,
how the fog often hovered
and descended as if sheltering
some sweet compulsion
the age was not ready to see.
On clear days the jagged
skyline of Atlantic City was visible--
Atlantic City,
where all compulsions had a home.
"Everything's too easy now,"
she said to her neighbor,
"nothing resisted, nothing gained."
Once, at eighteen,
she dreamed of London's proud salons glowing
with brilliant fires and dazzling chandeliers.
Already her own person--passionate, assertive--
soon she'd create a governess
insistent on rights equal
to those above her rank. "The dangerous picture
of a natural heart," one offended critic carped.
She'd failed, he said, to let religion reign
over the passions and, worse, she was a woman.
Now she was amazed at what women had,
doubly amazed at what they didn't.
But she hadn't come back to complain or haunt.
Her house on the bay was modest, adequate.
Stephen Dunn
Posted over on Poets.Org
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