she's not there

you can rent a room
by the hour
in Amherst
and see what she saw.
peer out her second
story window,
sit where
she sat
and wrote in her strange
exact
way of writing,
perhaps feel
the heat from her stove,
touch
the bed, the linens
where she lay
before
placing beneath the mattress
her poems,
but still you won't
know her.
everything remains
as it was,
except she's not there.