Expectation

He’s become accustomed to

small hours of the night needing friends,

as he and the stub of his pencil and dog-eared notebook,

have only the candlelight for company.

He cares little that the cabin knows only dark and cold,

a chosen seclusion undisturbed save for the mouse under the floor

and the resident spider weaving a catch-all-landscape

for lure and dining.

His self-imposed isolation is a small price to pay

if someday there will be a reader as absorbed in reading

as he is in writing sentences that might now and then

be worth repeating in a whisper.

For without a reader,

there would be only his pale aging face

reflected in the opaque windowpane,

beyond which bare trees and deep snow

patiently await the candle’s final flicker

and his closing words for the surreal shadows of expectation.