Vestige

Come summer

it will crowd with leaves:

at nightfall

alone in the pasture

it will shudder with cicadas.

Now in winter

the narrow trunk

and sweeping branches

sketch an egg-shape

in pencil

against a colorless, ebbed sky.

It is a riddle

on that bare horizon:

not tree so much as

scaffolding

place-holder

cipher

cup

transparent carapace

of winter's no.