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-06Lighting the Furnace Pilot Cold must come hard to our hill these winter nights, drive my wife to wool, her mood to ice, before I will climb to the attic to light the furnace pilot. There are no skeletons in my loft, no pulsing bats. A firm mind and wire mesh keep them out with the early frost and ruined leaves— it is neither fate nor fear. My ascension creaks the ladder and I slide back the panel and hoist my extra twenty pounds up among the rafters. No bats, or bones, I think, my fingers finding the knob that will put breath back into this winter house. Then the blue jet sings, fire pops from a hundred holes as I hunker in the dark and warm, my hands on the furnace sides. Above my head the leaves flit and finger across the roof, and the wind, heavier and a year older, moans from fate or fear. ...

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