The yellow kitchen is shadowy now . . . a square of light above the stove, a blue burner flame under a steel kettle, glimmers of reflection in the glass cupboard doors. Outside a gale blunders and roars through the trees. Here, under this lamplight, in this howling half-dark, I might be living in a cottage in the Grimms' brothers' forest.

Specters are everywhere. The ghosts of apple trees glow in the wood stove; the ghosts of ancestors spin among the gusts and draughts; the ghosts of myself sneeze in the dusty corners of cupboards. I listen. . . . Sometimes I believe what they tell me.

Still, the wild geese are flying: I watched a clutch of them yesterday battling their way north.

Instructions for Foreigners (1912) 

Dawn Potter 

Eloquence is not required;
we explain every word that you say.
There is no charge to enter,
merely a charge to stay.

A nail in a hoof is worth two in a hand.
Thoughts are like men in a boat.
If a sentence is trapped on a sandbar,
only its bones will float.

As melodies flit, you should count them
before you prepare to cry.
For lack of a nail, your horse was shot.
Burn the barn, and your eyes will dry. 

[from Chestnut Ridge]