Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,   

My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing

From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys   

Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff

Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:   

I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,

As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.   

A stillness greatens, in which

( The whole house seems to be thinking )