Let Me In

I hear her feet pat on the floor,

      Adown the darkened hall;

A hand knocks on my study door,

      Then pipes awee voice small:

“P’ease poppy, let me in,” it says,

      I won’t touch anyfin”;

A pause, and then more anxiously,

      “P’ease poppy, let me in.”

My mind is made up to refuse,

      To send her straight away;

Besides, I’ve told her not to come

      So early in the day.

And so I turn to desk and book,

      My writing to begin,

When once again that wee voice pleads:

      “P’ease poppy, let me in.”

I know just who is waiting there,

      A brown-eyed tot of three,

With sunny curls and dimples fair,

      Who’s all the world to me.

Two hands that love to stroke my face,

      And smooth my wrinkled brow –

A loneliness steals o’er the place,

      I cannot write just now.

And so I steal up to the door,

      And turn the knob, and then

With quick and noiseless step I sink

Into my chair again.

The door swings open, there she stands

      Arrayed in smiles to win;

And this is what she says to me:

      “See, poppy, me dot in!”

                                          Joe Cone

June 20, 1900