Day 830: Haunted

'Ourself, behind ourself concealed,/Should startle most;'

I'll be posting spooky themed poems all week for Halloween.  First up it's Emily Dickinson with a very valid supposition: that our minds are the most frightening places of all. 

'Far safer', she says, to meet a ghost, gallop through a Abbey, or find an assassin in the closet than confront our true selves, 'a superior spectre.'  I definitely agree. What humans are capable of - cruelty, misery, violence - is far more horrifying than anything the supernatural has to offer.

#29 Haunted - Emily Dickinson

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near.