The Tracery
The hoarfrost traces the trees
Like a boy on his knees
Tracing a picture in a book.
When he asks his father to look
His father sighs and puts on his glasses.
How fast his enthusiasm passes.
Son and father go back to bending their necks,
One to his book of pictures, the other to his book of checks.
Winters and winters hence,
A man leaves the house he rents
And walks across the winter yard.
His tender inner life has grown too hard.
His death shakes the hoarfrost from the tree,
Revealing the real beneath the tracery.