Keyhole
Why, you ask, am I down
on my knees
A man my age, eye
pressed to this door
Cold brass knob
soothing my fevered brow
Striking a pose as contrived
as a Rockwell
Cover for The Saturday
Evening Post
Defunct, both of them,
going on forty years now
Vanished as clean as
the skeleton key
That fit this keyhole like
a glove in 1923, back
When they still wore
gloves in the evening
Satiny white fingers closed
around a bulbous
Nose, the narrow face, patrician
mouth
Frozen in a puritan pucker
of disapproval
A car, maybe a
Hupmobile, idling
In the drive, implacable
behind
Pince nez lenses and cold
chrome smile.
Help me to my feet, get
me to my chair, fix me
A muddled Old Fashioned
and I’ll tell you
What I read in the
paper, the print version
Last flickers of life
leaching away through my fingers.
Keyless they say in the
next ten years,
Nothing to jingle in my
pocket when
I’m ready to leave or
fumble on the porch
On a moonless night, left
to squint through a slot
At the blue blur of a
receding world.
No comments:
Post a Comment