Reassurance

(After reading Joseph Payne Brennan s Creep to Death)

Hour ticking late,
The kindling you plied
Is embered. Charring sticks fall
Down in the grate.
December s outside
And shadows ascend the wall.
Listen! and wait
There someone just cried
The chimney wind? Or a wraith s call?
It s nothing, no, nothing at all!
1983

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