How a Poem Delivers the News

There is a room in a wooden house,
Not terribly old but old enough
To have that wooden smell, a farmhouse.

And there’s pale sunlight on the wood floor
And sun shadows on the fading walls.
This is not a dream or a memory

From someone’s childhood. It just is
As you see it now. A worn, warm room
With light as soft as a chamois cloth,

And then the faint whispering, almost
Like the concealed scratching of a mouse,
The single envelope under the door.