The country has just begun to put on her robe of tints. The earliest trees are decked in palest orange, working gradually into scarlet & crimson. It is like a sunset to see the earth & sky putting on the manners of the evening.

—Letter from Emily Dickinson to her friend Abiah Root, 1851

•••

Forgive the impolite use of your first name
when we have not been properly introduced,

though I feel that we have, thanks to another
belle of Amherst, a poet I knew who, some

120 years after your death, sent me walking
on my first visit to the town she shared with you,

pointed me to the cemetery where I could find
you, then to your house to stand in your bedroom

and look out the window into venerable trees
robing themselves in autumn tints,

shimmering in late afternoon light.
Later I gathered acorns from your lawn

to bring home, not to plant in the earth,
but cradle in a palm or pocket on a walk—

you two poets tucked into my heart—
poeting as we go,

always as we go.

•••

(for Pat Schneider, one of the belles of Amherst, and, of course, for Emily Dickinson)