The Tracery
The ice traces the trees
Like a boy on his knees
Tracing a picture in a book.
When he asks his father to look
He sighs and puts on his glasses.
How soon his enthusiasm passes.
Father and son bend their necks
To a book of pictures, a book of checks.
Winters and winters hence
A man leaves the house he rents
And walks across the yard.
Life has grown too hard.
But his death shakes the ice from the tree,
Revealing the real beneath the tracery.