New windows for our poet Susan Wallace leave her all at sea without her small distortions, on Day 738 of the Daily Poems …
Window replacement
They’d aged worse than I had, frames
grown friable, sills under scabbed paint
damp and crumbling as fruit cake.
But oh, the glass! Its flaws and ripples
causing passers-by to leap and jig
heron-legged and stove-pipe hatted,
walk on air or shrug into themselves
like telescopes. Those windows
welcomed in the cold; rattled in high winds
like a consumptive’s cough; caught
our night breath and turned it to puddles.
Through new pains now I see my view
was pulled askew for all those years.
Walkers have forgotten how to dance.
They trudge head down against the wind,
and slouch and stoop and do the dog-shit juggle.
North winds no longer make the curtains fill
and billow, urgent to hoist sail. Without
my small distortions I’m left all at sea.
On winter mornings now the glass retains
no trace of us, as though our breath
were held, awaiting the return of wonders.
Susan Wallace