[Hilary Biehl]

I don't know if I am reading it correctly, but my impression right now is that the poem is about a sense of strangeness or otherness that intrudes, perhaps inexplicably, in the midst of the familiar.

"I don't know where beyond is exactly" suggests to me that there isn't a concrete reason for this intrusion of the strange, or at least not one that the N can currently put her finger on. Although the fantastical elements help us to feel the otherness the N is feeling, it is precisely the ordinary things of life - a dog howling, tires screeching, the willow changing color, something gleaming in the yard, etc - that have suddenly become indicative of dislocation.

Maybe there is more to it than that, but I don't think there necessarily needs to be. It's difficult to capture a nebulous feeling (because it's, well, nebulous) and I think this poem does it.