the garden door

half-glass, the upper pane single and old, with a slow bow in the middle of it where the lead has settled. you can see the garden through it but only as a green idea, and beyond it the long stripe of the walk. the lower panels are painted in the same sage as the shutters, scuffed at the toe-line.

it is opened more than any other in the house — for the beekeeper, for the cat, for laundry, for cut mint, for the boots that must not come in. by mid-summer the threshold below it is a brass tongue polished by going out and not by coming in.

its sound is the rattle of the pane in its frame when the wind is east. on still days it closes with a small woody clop, like a horse stepping once. in winter a draft slips beneath it and lays itself along the skirting.

field-note · press a palm to the pane at four — body warmth and pane warmth meet, briefly, in disagreement.