Outdoors, the white, unmended patches blotch
the timber in the winter park. The curled
rock maples sift the snowflakes to their feet
where a fossil footprint with nowhere to go
resumes its promenade along the street
steps gently on the ice and disappears.

What if last autumn's curfew led a beast
to exile in his log or cave? The dawn
will thaw the frozen timepiece as the year's
iced gargoyles gag and pockmarked puddles
strain
with witless laughter on the boulevard.

Time hangs like shirtsleeves in the stiffening 
weather.                                                   Stilettos wait the victim where the drops
had synchronized a watch. Hours ago -
or centuries - an unidentified feather
replaced the bread crumbs in the slippery yard.