"Frost Flowers" a poem by Louis Jenkins

In the morning people go off to work all wrapped and bundled, through frozen doors, over cracking snow, huffing and puffing, each fueled by some simmering private indignation: low pay, something that was said at coffee break. . . . The sun is far away on the southern horizon, a vague hope, more distant than the Caribbean. Eight below zero at eleven o'clock. The coffee boils and grows bitter. All afternoon the same old thing, knucklebone of mastodon, stews on the stove. The radiator hisses at the long shadows which finally engulf the winter day. Lights come on for a time in the houses and go out one by one. We breathe deeply of the dark, we exhale great plumes and fronds that form on the windows, intricate icy blossoms open around us all night.