Won Exit
In one or two lives
I opened the door with the prize
only to find the prize was not worth the life.
I wanted the door.
Brave mahogany door, you be my fortune.
Teach me to understand the jungle cry
in your grain, the suffering circles
by which your tree wisdom is known.
I was superior with handles,
gentle with thresholds. Then, this.
Choices at morning hours I usually skip
but there is a little cash flow of beauty
where there is almost no more water.
And there is not room and light enough
to stand behind the second
and listen anymore—
I am going through the language of me now.
I am flipping open the dictionary of myself
with my tongue, as if that were possible,
to find your first word.
In the torture of a foyer
doorless for entering, I am entering none.
Copyright © 2017 by Elizabeth Metzger. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 24, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.