I feel like Emily Dickinson did,
running her pale finger over each blade of grass,
then caressing each root in the depths of
the earth's primeval dirt,
each tip tickling heaven's soft underbelly.
I feel like Emily alone in her room,
her hands folded neatly in her lap,
waiting forever for one of those
two daguerreotypes to embalm her precious soul.
At my most attuned,
the present is a pair of wings stretching
forever in all directions, flapping calmly,
calmly flapping. But as soon as I notice
how happy I am, how close to the sun,
there I go plummeting into the background
of the same damn painting as ever.
If I could reach my hand out to you now,
would you take it? How do you think it would feel?
Warm and soft and certain? Or like Emily's:
clammy and brittle as hardened paste?
Is that not how you imagine her hands?
Look again—they were like that,
otherwise she could never, would never,
have written those poems.