I stepped from Plank to Plank

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch—
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

       -F926, J875, sheet 13, 1865


Stepping into this poem is like walking onto a precarious plank. You want to go through any Dickinson poem slowly and cautiously. When I get to “The Stars about my head I felt” I am suddenly immersed in the immensity of the poem. I feel myself under the dizzying expanse of the night time sky. Then there’s a line break and I look down at the equally dizzying expanse of the Sea. Vertigo sets in. I am suspended there between these two giants, dwarfed.

I had a dream once I was riding on a cloud over the ocean and was suddenly freaked out by the precariousness of my position. How am I being held up by a cloud??? It was a metaphor, I later decided, for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life. This poem feels a little like that. How do we stay suspended between these twin abysses? Any wrong move and we may fall.

There is an earlier poem, dated 1862, that could stand as a sequel:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing—then—

"I felt a funeral in my brain" by Andrew Bird, Phoebe Bridgers

Is it good to fall or not? Is to be "Finished knowing" a good thing? 

The poem written down by Emily's hand directly above this one on the same sheet of paper (sheet 13) has a bird "fall" to its death. Tom C pointed out in the comments to this poem (see F925) that the word “fall” is worth considering. Tom's comment reminded me of other uses of the word "fall" in Dickinson’s oeuvre, especially the lines from F754,

Still at the Egg-life –
Chafing the Shell –
When you troubled the Ellipse –
And the Bird fell –

Does "fell" here mean die or fly?

I'm now thinking of the famous poem F372, "After great pain a formal feeling comes," where the feet mechanically go around in the air, 

The Feet, mechanical, go round—
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—

This reference further reminds me that anytime Dickinson uses the word “feet” in a poem, which is often, she seems to simultaneously mean metrical feet. (Metrical feet are the rhythmic units in poetry). It's self-referential; Dickinson's actual feet become synonymous with her poetic feet. So in this poem "step by step" also means something like beat by beat. Try re-reading the poem with this idea in mind. Reading these poems may feel precarious, but writing them must have felt even more so.  Along these lines, the last couplet of this poem is worth thinking about,

This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

If we think of the feet in this poem as metrical feet, then the precarious gait of the rhythm in Dickinson’s poetry suddenly appears to be an effect of heart-break. I’d never thought of the angular and clipped conciseness of her poetry as a product of pain and survival's subsequent fears, but in this poem, for the first time, I do.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. Here's the full account of my dream of riding clouds:

SEA OF BOOKS

I tell myself before going to bed that I want to have a good dream and remember it. And I do. This morning I had a dream where Eve and I were in an old Victorian house on an island belonging to her family. While exploring the house I found an old book in the bookshelf that explained how to ride clouds. I showed the instructions to Eve and we decided to follow them. First we took a boat out to sea. When we reached the right spot a cloud came down and we got on. The cloud took us a mile or so up in the sky and we just floated there. It was so comforting to the eye to see so much water around us, like the eye was seeing itself. But then the rational fears kicked in. Fear of falling. How could we be supported by a cloud? Fear of being lost. What if the cloud just keeps drifting and we don't come back? But, alas, we didn't fall off and, lo, the cloud eventually returned us to the ship. This is a metaphor for the seemingly impossible buoyancy of life if ever I dreamed one. We took the ship back to the island.

After we settled in I went back to look at the book again. This time I noticed that the whole bookshelf was stained in a dark sea-blue light, which made it hard to distinguish the books. I finally found the book I was looking for. I started leafing through. It was incredible. On some pages the words were cut out of the page, so you could only read them if you held the book up to the light. Other pages were made of wood with words and decorative leaves carved in relief. There were many fantastic pictures. On one page a woman, a nurse-maid, appeared before me to tell an old story. I listened, wrapped up in the story, rapt. The book was full of surprises. When I finished reading the book I noticed that there was now writing carved into my hand, all the way through, so you could see it backwards on the back of my hand. I held it up to the light in wonder. I didn't look to see what the writing said, but it was in a beautiful script, the same as in the book. The writing had somehow transferred from the book. I don't think it matters what the writing said. What matters is that there was writing carved into my hand... Kafka's "I am writing", Book of John's "In the beginning was the Word", the original impulse of communication, relationship itself. These words I am now writing were what was written in my hand.