The windows’ crispy cataracts
conceal a small garden where
the tickled chemistry of frost
has electrified the few shrubs

there. Limbs of young spruce
flex, bend under the shivering
weight of a cold suffocation,
a funereal clamour of silent

rooks. Eager eyes at portholes
investigate, dream of snowfall,
imagine all the clichés in the book
when it comes to snowmen and

wait for the hour of the first flakes,
quiet against a thickening glass,
excited by a glacial,
wintry copse, a furnace of ice.