Curiosity

That morning,
as the news chattered

about broken records
we discovered the sandbox

––a haven for all things
static and plasticized––

frozen solid. The arms
of plastic men beckoned.

The maples bent over
with interest and ice.

With a few hours of work,
the action figures could have been

drying on the dish rack,
Spider Man dwarfed

by the china platter,
The Hulk roaring

face down into the dish towel,
but the howling alarm

from across the street
of a car impaled

by a fallen tree limb
shook us instead

into discovering
how difficult it is to tell

the difference between
shattered glass and ice.