When you live in an old place, you take all that you can get.

The creaking of the balcony on which you take your seat, The wind plucking at your old nails As you sit among the needy air—a thing made for the sore heart.

The air is full of small stories of Buds and branches coming up anew; The calm of eventuality, The breath of autumn subtly turning gray.

When, sitting at the window there, you feel Yes, you are old, child of the horizon, As if The seasons have pooled there, Waiting for you, And the years nest in your breast.

• Gwendolyn Brooks