FORESTS, TREES AND PURPLE COWS:
AN EMILY DICKINSON CONVERSION OF THE MIND
by Wendy Barker
Page 6
FROM THE ATTIC AT THORNFIELDShe did not want to burn
down the house because
she was in love with fire.It was never that.
It was because of the closed
doors, the straight wallsthat stopped any long breathing,
that told her, when she tried
to laugh, to stop.And the chairs, the chairs
slim and delicate,
lined against the edgeof a room, lap sideways
to lap, no one facing.
Even the windows looking outfelt too slick and hard
to her fingers, nothing open
about them. How did she knowthat what she saw
outside was really there?
That the hedges were any moreyielding than a locked door?
And the stones rose in walls so high
so thick, she had never foundthe way out.
In the first delicate
lickings of flame, the lovelyleafings of orange, yellow,
the prickings and twinings
of the snapping noises,she could hear voices,
the click of new tongues,
the lap of loud breathing,and she knew
that as the roar began,
with its great wind, blackness,red over brightest red, flames
that took over the sky,
she knew she did love itnow, it was all
she had ever loved,
this sweet terrorthat raced its own body
together with hers
over the terraces, the gardens,out to the orchards, the hills,
its blazing voice
finally loud enough,that the only way it would ever stop
would be when it had spoken
to everything it could find,and there would be,
for the first time,
nothing left, nothingleft to say.
