Windowpane

Windowpane / Bryn Homuth

Icicles grip the awning above
where he stands, a nearby bird
feeder the only splash of color

as he stares in its face the pane
beyond which sits his wife
in her room.

There are no chairs snow-set for visitors, not outside
in winter, where the low has only just begun to walk,
and the high will soon start driver’s ed.

Highs and lows like these
do not matter to him as they once did.
How long he might stand there

nobody knows, whether
they can hear each other, or prefer to leave
voices for the phone.

How much passes through a window,
that device to keep out all but sight,
that we will never see? The pain of glass

is in its shattering, and slow
wave-wearing back to sand,
that stand-in for Time itself.

A Hand descends, gathers the grains,
they pass over Palm,
blanket the beaches of this world.

This windowpane will come down, too,
by an errant neighborhood ball,
some architect’s revision,

in one of those instances
of erosion fully realized, 2600
Fahrenheit, maybe

           Glass is not a crystal;
           here, there are no bonds broken.

or after wave upon wave of sound
and air and water and light
and grief have crashed against it.

Windowpane and photo: Copyright 2021 by Bryn Homuth. All rights reserved.