Footprints in the Frost
It is a cold sun that rises over the quarry.
Too late in the year for warmth.
Still, there is value in light,
in the details only a November sun can reveal.
My feet crunch on the grass beneath your feet,
leaving temporary footprints
of broken grass and shattered frost.
I are, it seems, easily traceable.
It has not always been so.
I was raised in a family of secrets,
where shadows were our comfortable place.
As I aged, that childhood comfort became less so.
Better this. Footprints in the frost.
Follow me if you like. Or don’t.
For better or worse,
you will always know where I am.
About this poem
My father was an alcoholic. A good man who I loved dearly, but an alcoholic. Our life was spent trying to keep his secret.
The older I get, the more open a book I become. Particularly in sharing my emotions, which was not encouraged in our house.
The picture was taken on the quarry about my house.
From those things, this poem.
Tom
Quarry House 
Really resonates. Many of your reflective poems do. Quarry surroundings tug at my curiosity.
I, too, grew up in a house of shadows (alcoholic dad died while I was still in high school) – took many years to shake the keep-it-hidden mindset. Since midlife I leave poem “footprints” (retracing past and exploring new territory).
I live in a little town in Vermont that was once driven by slate quarries. They were mostly abandoned in the 60’s. I have them across the street, back behind my house, and just past three houses, to one side. THey are wonderful places to walk through.