by Daisy Bassen
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
And what she has dreamt of,
Through a long night, carding darkness,
The whole fleece still warm, still charged
With day. I woke twice, within my mind
And without. Your face inquiring,
A warrant, a conviction,
I hold it yet though we’ve been years apart.
The first love, however it came, sought,
In accidental power —
I squirrelled away against the winter
Of our age, our loneliness, a companion Moon
That I might have the sky.
Author’s note: The poem is a wasp, a nonce I created which uses four lines from Emily Dickinson in varying order in the stanzas, ending with a line from Dickinson.
Daisy Bassen is a poet and physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at the University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has appeared in Oberon, McSweeney’s and [PANK] among other journals. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.
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