A Dozen Doors

Robert Ronnow
The Imaginary i

A Dozen Doors

I wanna poem
about a door.
Nothing more.
Just a door.
Nothing more.
Just the door.
Zach awoke
from a scary dream.
He asked will the doors hold?

The doors close
but she decides
she wants out.
She bangs on the door
as the train begins
to move. Maybe
a hand or foot
was caught
in the door.

Surrender to greater
force, power, strength
whatever it is called,
the clog of heels
upstairs to the door,
turning of the key,
indestructible garbage,
bulldozed landscape,
Anthropocene.

Next I water
thirty thirsty plants.
I check the mailbox
a neck a stretch
a search
for the mailman.
My doing this
loosens the windows
and delivers the doors.

Cells, machinery
of life, organs,
organisms, communities
and ecosystems,
planets, solar systems, galaxies
galactic clusters
and their inverse
black holes, the doors
to other universes.

Man made the town
and the machine
from rocks mined
next door.
Invisible electrons
move the machine
to perform.
My simplicity
is terminal.

At the 2nd St. jail
the sheriff’s dept.
provides guards,
a metal detector,
one man with a gun,
door buzzer
(in out),
sign in sheet,
alphabugs, antibiotics.

In a century
when we fear
nuclear war
and the shock
of fast change,
motel doors sport
three locks
though nothing dangerous
could happen in a town like this.

Repairs take weeks
or months. Septic,
patch garage door,
cracked windshield,
mud road,
rake leaves,
cut wood,
prune lilac,
paint lawn chairs.

It was already dark
when I left work
and latched the doors.
On First Ave.
block residents
hanging out front steps.
I bought a beer
at the deli on Third Ave.
from the Arab owner.

There must be
a crack, deep
and unmendable,
that the poet
must try to mend,
not just mildly disquieted
but running
for the River Styx,
the doors of Hell pell mell.

First the window
sills are covered
then the door
jambs with snow,
our lips are sealed
then our eyes shut.
Sleep like this
we’ve never known.
Will Spring return?