Walking Down Stairs In The Dark Of Night Poem by Chris Ernest Nelson

Walking down stairs in the dark of night,
silence weighs heavy in the air.
Every step sounds an alarm
and threatens my intention,
though I move with the delicacy of a cat.
No shadows in mind or meaning.

Into the beckoning darkness,
a faint promise made to
each unmarked step.
Still a panoply of dreams sets
the boundaries of a world not defined
by walls or by reaching.

Still the building itself complains.
It calls out from corners and spaces
I have never visited-
even in the daylight.
It knows of ghosts and memories
older than its planks and pilings.

I am a trespasser in this house,
where the bone and sinew are tuned
as tight as a guitar.
What can I know of its mystery
and the stories of its sighing,
revealed only in flashes of black?