A multiple exposure Christmas photograph I took during a 1960 visit to my grandparents’ home in Concord, NH

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Childhood memories
still linger
as family ghosts
at two-seventy-six North Main
where, in the dark half light
of winter’s morning,
a sound awakes me.
Is it the snapping crack
of ice-encrusted elms
or rattle of storm windows
in the wind
or just the creaking floorboards 
as my grandmother descends
the dark back stairs
into the cold kitchen?
I listen carefully now
and hear the poker-prodding sounds
of wood shifting on the andirons
as she stokes last night’s embers
into hopeful flickers
in the old colonial hearth.
The smell of coffee
draws me down,
the first awake,
to join her in the warming kitchen,
my place set with fresh toast,
and with her
catch the sunrise over snow
in this our special time.