Frontier The frost performs its secret ministry unhelped by any wind. Samuel Taylor Coleridge When it forms on the window, it tempts everyone to touch its patterned lace, crystal spreading until the heat of one finger- print presses it down to water.  Its paintings will outlast those hands; blue veins will slow and halt on old wrists, while frost goes on marking glass.  So much is made in disturbance, wind- chimes, snowdrifts.  Jackpine seeds only germinate when broken open by the heat of brushfires turned forest blazes by the right winds, which can also touch faces with the last of a rain: not from the sky but from downstretched, dangling fingers of branches.  Leafless boughs make the best streams when the rain has ceased, a slim braid of water curling down cleanly into a waiting mouth. Only delicate things last, mark the passage of time: crystal drawings pressing the pane when the door is left ajar, a pen dripping stains onto an open book.  Thin stockings made for forgotten boots, settings on the table half- taken, half-left behind, just a tarnished spoon still holding air, worn through and greening, waiting to be disturbed.