When I cut words you never may have said

into fresh patterns, pierced in place with pins,

ready to hold them down with my own thread,

they change and twist sometimes, their color spins

loose, and your spider generosity

lends them from language that will never be

free of you after all. My sampler reads,

"called back." It says, "she scribbled out these screeds."

It calls, "she left this trace, and now we start"—

in stitched directions that follow the leads

I take from you, as you take me apart.

You wrote some of your lines while baking bread,

propping a sheet of paper by the bins

of salt and flour, so if your kneading led

to words, you’d tether them as if in thin

black loops on paper. When they sang to be free,

you captured those quick birds relentlessly

and kept a slow, sure mercy in your deeds,

leaving them room to peck and hunt their seeds

in the white cages your vast iron art

had made by moving books, and lives, and creeds.

I take from you as you take me apart.

From Calendars

ANOTHER POEM FOR DICKINSON