Robert Rothman: “Winterwork”
WINTERWORK
Old windows are best: nicked, scratched, or scored;
new glass, like young faces, lacks the pocks and pits
for ice to take hold, and in cold night to filigree
a tapestry of interweaving lines
as fine as any spider could weave, a crystal
arabesque, a fretwork of white that obscures
and ornaments, so trees, rooflines, and passersby
seem seen in overlay, a pentimento
that heightens, as when listening to another:
time stops and blood surges, the words beneath
the uttered are heard, the tracery of others’
fault lines in invisible view: splintered glass and cracks
softly exploding, as does ice when sun’s
first heat touches frost, patterned across sand and
ash heated into clear, before perception
fogs, the double vision done, heart and eyes
returned to surface sight, the melt running down
the glass in drips and drizzles, dissolved in the light.
Robert Rothman has had work appear in Atlanta Review, The Alembic, Existere, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Westview, Willow Review, and over fifty other literary journals.