What the Door Opens On
This room
These bare metal shelves
The struts that brace them
Two gritty chairs
Tears in loose papers curling
On the sunboiled desk.Oh it is perfectly true that these walls enclose
All the paraphernalia of idleness and panic
Waiting for use. But something-some film or absence-
Is more, is heavier, than what the door opens on.As from the ocean
The casual rain drifted inward
Scribbling the streets,
She thought of copperheads
Fixing blue venom in quick nerves.
She thought of tanagers, and
Their crimson wings glittered at her wrists.
She thought clearly of snowflakes forever
Falling into the soundless misery of night.