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Billy Collins - Taking Off Emily Dickinson`s Clothes
Work rating: High

	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.
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