The wood wakes with a single thought:
a blessing to some ulcerated
crow pecking at fissures in the hoarfrost,
by the woodpile, fissures cresting into being
by nature
of the wriggling things.
Hoarfrost.
Air hoar, depth hoar, surface hoar:
the way the morning gussies and glints
and affects, and window frost and frost flowers,
the art of patterned lack,
and rime that knows the world is a ship
drawn by currents all turning cold.
The house has central heat and air
and transoms, blankets once
engorged with a shivering child
seeing frost flowers in the windows,
flowers pressed by being seen
between glass and the cold days.
The porch lattice is still splintered
where the robin struck it
and where its ribs like lattice
splintered while your boy watched
astounded at this first sign that animals
could be oblivious or suicidal.
