Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders
and laid on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone
with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress,
a more complicated matter
with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous
that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window
in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg
of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan
into the night,
but, of course, I cannot
tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes
to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage
passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally
it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh
when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Billy Collins

Posted over on Poemhunter