The Storm

When it dies out, the storm, the silence
of frost hammering its fists against the glass.
Last night, they asked about their father again,
when will he call, what does it all mean?
Now a small white ghost rests in the corner
of the window. We’ve tried to summon it before,
poured full bags of salt into jars of boiling water,
lowered pieces of string and returned morning
and another morning for the crystal that never formed.
Somehow I always got the balance wrong.
Now it’s arrived to us on the courtyard-facing window
that I can’t afford to replace yet.
We inspect it through the electric handheld microscope.
Magnificence spreads across the lower part of the pane
in patterns of ferns, feathers. I say
the broken part of the glass made this possible,
the frost outside, the moisture inside, met.
We are not broken, we are three full bodies
huddled over a morning gift. In the silence
after the storm, it grew across the punctured double glazing,
each feather, leaf shaped by the cold, our sleep,
the structure of glass. They listen. This, I can explain.

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