“Perhaps he has heard a warning of someone’s death,
a strange noise, a shriek on the roof.
Perhaps a man has passed him in the open road
and disappeared suddenly, leaving no tracks…
Always there is some souvenir of the spirit-world

Bite the head off the first butterfly you see,
and you will get a new dress.

Take seven hairs from a blood snake,
seven scales from a rattlesnake,
seven bits of feathers from an owl –
boil for seven minutes over a hot fire
in the first rainwater caught in April.

Still,
there it is.”