It looks so welcoming by day
   with yellow frames and doors.
But it’s an eerie house by night.
   There’s shuffling across floors.

There’re slippers shuffling, step by step.
   There’s shuffling on and on.
But with the new day’s morning light
   those shuffling sounds are gone.

It sounds like an old woman’s walk
   in search throughout the night.
It seeks and seeks but cannot find
   until the day’s first light.

At nightfall it moves from the lounge,
   comes crawling gingerly
And gropes about outside each door
   as though it lacked the key.

It fiddles with the kitchen door,
   it rattles and it knocks,
It claws and fumbles at the boards
   and touches knobs and locks.

Then it slides on along the wall—
   swish!—down the hall some more.
Then it goes climbing up the stairs
   onto the attic floor.

Up there it slowly stomps about
   and rummages and tears.
Then it steps back toward the hatch
   and comes back down the stairs.

The lounge door’s heavy iron chain
   keeps rattling, on and on.
But when at dawn the rooster crows
   the whole thing’s simply gone.