in fact a poet friend of mine says of dickenson that funerals were her tv. she would look from her window to watch the funeral cortege and get a glimpse of the whole village. mortality and the brevity of life was a huge subject for her. >> reporter: i felt a funeral in my brain. >> yup. >> reporter: after great pain of formal feeling comes. >> and the nerves sit ceremonious like tombs. the stiff, hard questions. those are feel that is she awakens in us because we all know what it's like to grieve or to survive an illness. >> reporter: above us, small birds pestered a hawk, perhaps protecting the nest. if nature is read in tooth and claw and represents the realm of mortality , poetry endures. >> essential oil are rung the atar from the rose be not expressed by suns alone. it is the gift of screws. >> reporter: a pressed rose, that is, lives on as its perfumed essence. >> the general rose decay, but this in lady's door makes summer when the lady lie in ceaseless rosemary. >> reporter: live roses die , but the perfume and poem illicit an endless summer, though