Kind Sir: This is an old game <br />that we played when we were eight and ten. <br />Sometimes on The Island, in down Maine, <br />in late August, when the cold fog blew in <br />off the ocean, the forest between Dingley Dell <br />and grandfather's cottage grew white and strange. <br />It was as if every pine tree were a brown pole <br />we did not know; as if day had rearranged <br />into night and bats flew in sun. It was a trick <br />to turn around once and know you were lost; <br />knowing the crow's horn was crying in the dark, <br />knowing that supper would never come, that the coast's <br />cry of doom from that far away bell buoy's bell <br />said <br />your nursemaid is gone <br />. O Mademoiselle, <br />the rowboat rocked over. Then you were dead. <br />Turn around once, eyes tight, the thought in your head. <br />Kind Sir: Lost and of your same kind <br />I have turned around twice with my eyes sealed <br />and the woods were white and my night mind <br />saw such strange happenings, untold and unreal. <br />And opening my eyes, I am afraid of course <br />to look-this inward look that society scorns- <br />Still, I search these woods and find nothing worse <br />than myself, caught between the grapes and the thorns.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/kind-sir-these-woods/
