Contract.

We sit indoors and talk of the cold outside.

And Every gust that gathers and heaves

Is a threat to the house. But the house has long been tried.

We think of the tree. If it never again has leaves,

We'll know, we say, that this was the night it died.

-Robert Frost, from 'There Are Roughly Zones', The Poetry of Robert Frost (Holt 1969)

Each shingle crooks to the deficit of the builder.

Each window boasts a warp.

The moderate room in which you sew

And sing,

Is at an irregular angle.

The hallway, too, is longer than the keenest foot steps remember.