Les rois ne touchent pas aux portes.
—Francis Ponge
It is the month of May: you open
and you close; you open and close
the door, the press, a small plastic
replica of the house. You bring
to the implacable destruction
of small towers the ambling gait
of a watchful gunslinger
tumbled smack to the floor.
For that he starteth and leapeth
and boundeth with jubilation,
thinks the tabby cat hunched
alarmed-faced at your feet.
You slide the glass door open and
surprised but pleased see
your face swim into place
on another behind it. Walls
are doors, shifting tectonic
plates of the open and closed,
the way in and out. Imagine
the sadness of kings never
touching doors for themselves
or uncovering with small
anemone fingers trailed round
the edge of the door their faces.
Face waiting all that time
to emerge from behind
your mother’s and mine, there
is the you behind the door
and the you that comes through it
in search of a book full of
moving parts. You open the book
and shrieking splay-fingered
brace your open arms with the
thrill of this, just this, this here.
