The house where night fell

A long time I crowded the fireplace, my brother and sister close by, the loud fire of our play reduced to embers, the day graying; lost in the flame, in the twittering log, I heard the last cries of the woodfinch, of the mourning dove nesting in the pine by the window. Calling back the day, they sang unseen as the gray shade came silently over the snow, into the yard, turning it ragged and cold, turning the tree old, giving the cries a chill; and the log burned bright as a tropical bird, warbling flame, the great pine log from an old tree, dark as the night.