First, her tippet made of tulle, <br />easily lifted off her shoulders and laid <br />on the back of a wooden chair. <br /> <br />And her bonnet, <br />the bow undone with a light forward pull. <br /> <br />Then the long white dress, a more <br />complicated matter with mother-of-pearl <br />buttons down the back, <br />so tiny and numerous that it takes forever <br />before my hands can part the fabric, <br />like a swimmer's dividing water, <br />and slip inside. <br /> <br />You will want to know <br />that she was standing <br />by an open window in an upstairs bedroom, <br />motionless, a little wide-eyed, <br />looking out at the orchard below, <br />the white dress puddled at her feet <br />on the wide-board, hardwood floor. <br /> <br />The complexity of women's undergarments <br />in nineteenth-century America <br />is not to be waved off, <br />and I proceeded like a polar explorer <br />through clips, clasps, and moorings, <br />catches, straps, and whalebone stays, <br />sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness. <br /> <br />Later, I wrote in a notebook <br />it was like riding a swan into the night, <br />but, of course, I cannot tell you everything - <br />the way she closed her eyes to the orchard, <br />how her hair tumbled free of its pins, <br />how there were sudden dashes <br />whenever we spoke. <br /> <br />What I can tell you is <br />it was terribly quiet in Amherst <br />that Sabbath afternoon, <br />nothing but a carriage passing the house, <br />a fly buzzing in a windowpane. <br /> <br />So I could plainly hear her inhale <br />when I undid the very top <br />hook-and-eye fastener of her corset <br /> <br />and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed, <br />the way some readers sigh when they realize <br />that Hope has feathers, <br />that reason is a plank, <br />that life is a loaded gun <br />that looks right at you with a yellow eye. <br /><br />Billy Collins<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/taking-off-emily-dickinson-s-clothes/
