The door
salt-stained
solid, old
barnacle-encrusted
thick metal lock
rusted
panels intact.
I want to pick you up
but your so-solid weight
defeats me
before I start
inside this humid bright day
beachcombing at Horseshoe Beach
a salt haze fills the air
fogs my dark glasses
lends tints of ocher and rouge,
afterimage of dazzle on white barnacles.
My mind lies all in my eyes
the sound of a tamed ocean inlet
the sound of my diminished hearing
the high white noise I hear as silence
my small dog silent
the tankers silent across the way
my own breathing in my ears
I hear only
The years
The years
The years
the door a passenger from the nineteenth
century
torn loose into this one here to lie
undiminished
from where was it torn?
The specter of its fate,
sifting quietly out again and in with
the tide
until it sifts down somewhere to sand
leaves me old in this moment
leaves me sad,
hinged now to the rolling salt flood
swinging wide open.
--- Lauri Burke
