Embers

I cannot look at burned-out ashes in a grate,
Or see the first faint rays of rosy dawn,
Without a sickening sense of tortured memory
Of that last night,
When silent, tense, we sat
Watching the embers fade to grey
And shadows of the night break into day;
With hands so clasped that they were numb,
Fearing to speak--lest words would turn
Too suddenly--upon farewell . . .

Kansas Poets
Edited by May William Ward
(New York: Henry Harrison. 1935)
Page 172