Door
The door was double-hinged
swinging in, as well as out.
It took all my weight, shouldering against.
Then whispered swiftly shut
with a soft pneumatic hiss.
Was that a click,
tumblers falling
locking cogs enmeshed?
And looking out
through the small glass pane
I saw only my face, looking back.
The darkness of night
a mirror's silvered paint.
Triple-glazed
and reinforced with mesh
it seemed unbreakable.
The massive door
I shouldered against,
that let me in
this windowless space.
Stale air
with a vaguely chemical scent.
No exit
despite what they say
about fate, surrender,
trust.
Impatience
trying me.
Thinking
I cannot wait.
…I must.
…I will.
I read an article about a man (Abbas Kairostami) who
has spent years photographing doors, and whose work is on exhibition at the Aga
Khan museum (in Toronto ). These are
not ordinary doors. They're doors with character and the patina of age, the
kind of massive wooden doors and dilapidated doors and doors with stories to
tell that you'd see on some ancient building in the Middle East ,
or sub-Saharan Africa . The pictures were beautiful, and
made me think that the lowly utilitarian door was worthy of a poem.
At my new pool, there is a hydraulic
door that at first caught me by surprise: if I don't lean all my weight pushing
against it, it will snap shut, throw my balance off.
Somehow, the image and the
experience conflated, and gave rise to this poem.
I was thinking of the old adage: when
a door closes behind you, a window opens. And maybe something about a gilded
cage, as well.
The poem can also be read
metaphorically: something about life choices and bridges burned, about
self-fulfilling prophecies and dead ends. Is he locked in, or locked out? Did
he cage himself?
The poem ends with perseverance,
the indomitable life force: as in Beckett's Godot, when there is no choice in
life, we simply go on.
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