Friday Poem

The Door on Princeton Avenue

In through that door walked Uncle Teddy.
In through that door danced Aunt Edna.
My mother left through that door
and my father, drunk, tottered through it.
Mornings that door was the first I touched
and the last I touched in the evening.
All my relatives entered that door.
Every friend too, can you believe it?
We lived on the second of three floors.
We had no chimney, the windows were high.
If Santa came, then he came through that door.
Easter Bunny too. When Jesus returned
to whisk us to heaven, he’d hover
with miracle sandals through that door.
News back then didn’t come over the phone,
or the internet, when someone died
kin crashed through that door to tell us.
One day when I was five I walked in that door
and one day I was fourteen and walked out.
We moved. We moved and left that door behind.
Yet I remember running through the apartment
to answer a knock, my hand on the cool knob,
feeling like I need only twist open that door
and the whole mystery of the world
would reveal itself and be mine forever.
That was a long time ago. Ages and ages.
Uncle Teddy dead. Aunt Edna dead. Dad too.
Mom barely holds on in a small trailer in Florida.
I haven’t seen that door now in almost thirty years.
Now some stranger is closing that door.
Now someone I never met is locking it.

by James Valvis
from Anderbo