As One does Sickness over

As One does Sickness over
In convalescent Mind,
His scrutiny of Chances
By blessed Health obscured —

As One rewalks a Precipice
And whittles at the Twig
That held Him from Perdition
Sown sidewise in the Crag

A Custom of the Soul
Far after suffering
Identity to question
For evidence't has been —

         -F917, J957, sheet 11, 1865

Surviving illness brings a heightened awareness of vulnerability. That's what I think this poem is about on the surface. Under the surface I think there is wrestling here with the idea of Grace too. 

It's a tricky poem. Let’s break it down as best we can.

As One does Sickness over
In convalescent Mind,

The body is convalescing, getting better, and the mind reflects back upon the illness. But the phrase “does Sickness over” gives you a sense that reflecting on sickness is itself a sickness. You are doing Sickness all over again. And for what? It's like you are stuck in the suffering.

His scrutiny of Chances
By blessed Health obscured —

Upon recovering from an illness, presumably a serious one, we think about the chance of death. I am reminded of the classic doctor’s diagnosis here; “Ms. Vinrace, you have a 50/50 chance.” But there is something else going on too I think. The idea that these “Chances” are, normally, by “blessed Health obscured” means that it takes an illness to bring this "chance" to light. Dickinson's poetry often causes me to stop and really look at a word. I pick it up and turn it around. "Chance" can mean probability, but it can also mean “risk” and “opportunity.” We have a "chance" to live, so we have to take this "chance." We can easily forget that when we are in "blessed health." It takes an illness to wake us up to it.

Another meaning of “chance,” though, is randomness. I think this meaning plays into the poem in the second stanza when we are presented with the idea of contingency. Is there a purpose to life, or is it random?

As One rewalks a Precipice
And whittles at the Twig
That held Him from Perdition
Sown sidewise in the Crag

Dickinson presents us with an analogy. Scrutinizing the recovery of an illness is like falling off of a cliff, being saved by a twig on the side of the cliff, and then going back to examine the twig. Not only do we look at the twig, but we “whittle” at it too. That’s interesting. It suggests that by examining the thing that saved us, we are actually making it more fragile. There is a sickness not only to examining the sickness, but perhaps even to looking at what kept us alive.

The word Perdition here adds a whole new element to the poem. Perdition primarily refers to eternal damnation; the state of being spiritually lost and punished forever after death. So now there is the suggestion that we are not just talking about a physical illness, but a spiritual one. If this is so, then the twig that saved us is no longer a thing of “chance,” but an instrument of Grace. This is why it has been “sown” into the crag, as if by design. The message I get is, don't question Grace or you will whittle it down to nothing.

“Sown” is an interesting word choice, but so is “sidewise.” It makes me think of Emily’s love of the word “slant" and these famous lines from a much later poem by Dickinson,

Tell all the truth but tell it slant -
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

The twig that saves us has been sown there, but it isn't coming in from an angle we can recognize. It's coming in sidewise. 

A Custom of the Soul
Far after suffering

Custom is another word you can pick up and turn around. I think the “does sickness over” and “whittles at the twig” both give us a sense that it might be better not to reflect upon the illness. Better to move forward.

Identity to question
For evidence't has been —

Here you are questioning identity itself. The poem turns existential. If I can die so easily, or, worse, become damned for eternity, then who am I? Does life have any meaning at all?

But then we remember all those twigs sown sideways into all of those crags, the millions of chances that had to be surmounted just for us to be here in the first place. 

    -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

  

P.S. An old joke:

Jack was walking along a steep cliff one day. He accidentally got too close to the edge and fell. On the way down he grabbed a branch, which temporarily stopped his fall. He looked down and to his horror saw that the canyon dropped straight down for more than a thousand feet.

He couldn’t hang onto the branch forever, and there was no way for him to climb up the steep wall of the cliff. So Jack began yelling for help, hoping that someone passing by would hear and rescue him.

“HELP! HELP! Is anyone up there?”

He yelled for a long time, but no one heard him. He was about to give up when he heard a voice. “Jack, Jack. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes! I can hear you. I’m down here!”

“I can see you, Jack. Are you all right?”

“Yes, but who are you, and where are you?”

“I am the Lord, Jack. I’m everywhere.”

“The Lord? You mean, GOD?”

“That’s Me.”

“I’ll do anything, Lord. Just tell me what to do.”

“Okay. Let go of the branch.”

“What?”

“I said, let go of the branch. Just trust Me. Let go.”

There was a long silence.

Finally Jack yelled, “IS ANYONE ELSE UP THERE?”