TUESDAY, APRIL 21Bill and Ruth Derisi brought a frog back from Mexico a couple of weeks ago; and when I saw it, I thought immediately of Emily Dickinson and her “I’m nobody” poem. Don’t misunderstand. I had great fun photoshopping the photographs; and I like the whimsy of the little Mexican frog, but I don’t consider Dickinson’s poem whimsical. It is perhaps her most famous verse, the one high school English teachers like to drag out when a plain girl in the class needs encouragement. This poem is much more than medicine for the lonely soul. First, the structure of the poem and its language are perfect. And the Belle of Amherst understood what all the great writers have known... that all of us are alone, not just the occasional plain girl or homely boy... that the basic problem created for us by the human condition is the management of our aloneness.

“I’m nobody! Who are you?”
by Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!