Other Rooms and Other Houses

for Emily

Did you ever feel
a moment of importance?
Your self-effacement hid
so much of you

until you died and the full
inked legacy shown in light
of other rooms and other houses.
Before, there were the few attempts

we know of when you traveled,
out beyond the Amherst  
boundaries, in posted proxy,
only to be altered by the day

and its conventions. Know
that editors remain the same
wherever they might find
themselves. Even friends,

intending only the best
for the you you left behind,
were faithless, too. It took
a distant stranger, born

long after you were buried,
to set you right before us
who find a thousand moments of importance,
daily, in the gifts you laid behind.