The Terror of Doors
held so tenuously
by such flimsy hinges, longing
for an axis so awe-inspiring
only its god could open it,
avoiding endless submission
to the careful and careless alike—
the sideways swinging fall
as the universe shoulders in,
banging the door
against the wall.
Doors want to stay
in a frame’s familiar embrace,
though a rebel
slants and swells so
as to reject it,
bestows a squeaky kiss
on a fraction of its width
but refuses the fit,
preferring to stay
where its bottom found a seat
on the equally unruly floor.
And a querulous door
sometimes bangs so deliberately
in unperceived breezes
as to unnerve its owners
with seeming agency,
an urge to escape its fate
and go winging off
after something
unimaginable in space.
The knob turns beak
or aeronautical control stick
to steer past stars,
the frame abandoned
to examine its navel,
and the wall, never elated
by the hole put in it,
now a toothless mouth,
a rectangular “O”
of awe or terror, as the gods
of chance advance.