The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.

The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart.

Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter.

Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.

It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it.

Everyone in me is a bird I am beating all my wings

Maybe I am becoming a hermit, opening the door for only a few special animals? Maybe my skull is too crowded and it has no opening through which to feed it soup?