First, her tippet made of tulle,
 easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
 on the back of a wooden chair.

 And her bonnet,
 the bow undone with a light forward pull.

 Then the long white dress, a more
 complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
 buttons down the back,
 so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
 before my hands can part the fabric,
 like a swimmer's dividing water,
 and slip inside.

 You will want to know
 that she was standing
 by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
 motionless, a little wide-eyed,
 looking out at the orchard below,
 the white dress puddled at her feet
 on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

 The complexity of women's undergarments
 in nineteenth-century America
 is not to be waved off,
 and I proceeded like a polar explorer
 through clips, clasps, and moorings,
 catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
 sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

 Later, I wrote in a notebook
 it was like riding a swan into the night,
 but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
 the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
 how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
 how there were sudden dashes
 whenever we spoke.

 What I can tell you is
 it was terribly quiet in Amherst
 that Sabbath afternoon,
 nothing but a carriage passing the house,
 a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

 So I could plainly hear her inhale
 when I undid the very top
 hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

 and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
 the way some readers sigh when they realize
 that Hope has feathers,
 that reason is a plank,
 that life is a loaded gun
 that looks right at you with a yellow eye.