Saving Panes
by Robert H. Bunzel
A foyer window sag-rots at one corner,
sash sides curled round a single pane
that’s one of twenty in a grille of cedar
muntins white with age. Save the frame
and nineteen other panes of old rolled
glass, rippled in the level light of fall.
Excise the handswidth blighted angle,
cut out only watered wood
to leave integrity at the beam.
A local mill takes time, to make just
inches of stile and rail matched to
moldings made eighty years ago, two
mortised pieces nosing into seam.
Attach a fine blade to the Skil saw,
shave the redwood, tap the
gapless proxies into place. Glaze a
new flat pane, wipe putty smudges
from the glass, and smooth, and paint.
Last, patch the sill and stop, to seal
out western gremlin rains.
Branch and leaf are undistorted
through the store-bought pane,
but in the wabi-sabi wrinkled ones
an iris makes the outside dance.
I pray no waxwing or windload
breaks the center of my rebuilt score,
this true divided light.
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Robert H. Bunzel is an attorney who lives in Piedmont. He notes: “The waxwing is from Nabakov’s Pale Fire, Canto One, lines 1-2.” E-mail: rbunzel at bztm dot com |