Choosing a house on an autumn afternoon

The room catches the shadows and sunlight on a mortar wall and trembles them like cymbals that crescendo music passages; silhouettes recite the mood of late season in flickering branch patterns. On a dusty floor of happiness-stained, now forsaken, porch the echo of a frail, wind-meagered nearby beech tree stalls, reflecting the hesitation of a breeze that sends its replicating shade and light to landscape an interior grid of space devoid of all past laughter and footfalls. In a chiaroscuro doorway I stand, uncertainly, heeding my heart, loathe now to decide that this is more house than I need. Pulling the door a trifle wider, my resolve capitulates to the routing rush of radiance that proclaims beyond the slightest doubt, gold confirmation that in the midst of hunting, I am home.