Tom Daley
To Emily Dickinson
Staggering like a cormorant
through water tension
you slung yourself
into air darker than bone.
The world to the top of the hill
and no faster.
You were a votive bat
blinking out of small caves
a torch fusing pollen
and horse hair
a marsh drowned
in the thaws of April.
You were housebound.
You were driven to sleet.
Parsley nicked your ankles
as a funeral procession tipped
into that field where forever
rolled its profit and its blight.
Outside your window,
gnats still collide with your arithmetic.
At school there was a clock
and a missal with ribbons.
You turned on the sour heel
of your theology
and stared them down.
