Are You the Envelope or Are You the Letter?

Are You

the Envelope 

or Are You

the Letter?

 

In many and reportless places

We feel Joy…

It comes without a consternation –

Disolves – the same –

But leaves a sumptuous Desitution –

Without a Name –

                                                Emily Dickinson

 

Maybe when she writes

to him she tells him:

if you can imagine this

envelope open, doesn’t it

 

look like the roof

of my house from one gable

end or another

and whatever suits

 

you to choose you

choose North or South end

and since you’re at

imagining imagine

 

yourself standing

beneath the one weather-

side with the old lace

curtain stuffed in one

 

of the broken-out panes.

Face the clapboards, your

back to the cove.  And touch

the cedar.  Isn’t it like

 

touching me?  Worn

soft in all those raging

Nor’easters beating out

spring and autumn winds

 

and the dulled lull of all

those summer days.  

You can

see it, can’t you, before

 

I seal the roof down

and make the house into

a paper boat without

a wheelhouse or sail?  Behind

 

the dry paper marsh

are a few seasonal birds

come down to Boston.  Like

‘when will winter be done

 

with us once and

for all” or “when will the red

rush up from my geraniums

and spill over the kitchen

 

window and make it hard for me

to see out and see you

coming.  You are, right? placing

your foot right now,

 

on my lane?