Imagining Emily Dickinson in 1852
She’s thinking of song—
dividing the day into eight
juicy bits,
into sixty little books
of six folded sheets,
“always in ink,”
the worm of oblivion
tucked neatly into one
gnawed corner—
polishing some lapidary
idea of a frayed eternity.
Her hair is red
feathers—a robin’s
breast (wary little bird
binding us to her
paint.) Her
wandering pupil stares
sideways to infinity;
it is morning where she is—
the sun passing
like a swollen eye
across the crowded
graveyard.