DOOR McGInn
Unlocking My Front Door
by Daniel McGinn

My front door turns
eggshell white
cracks open in the morning
as the sun’s great yoke
merges light into shadows
that break through tree leaves
shifting waving
calling its name

Stop stare for a spell
come see the white door
punched in the wall
of our blue house
appear to move
like a witch cloud brushed
into a tumbleweed crawl

Ancestors & descendants
given pass
step off the welcome mat
descend the stairs
down to the street
where worlds begin
& tumbleweeds spin

Every evening
shadows collect on the porch
to watch the sun drop scraped
from the plate
into the big black can

I don’t know why
my front door opens
with a dark sigh
on summer nights
stubbornly swells
against the frame
& refuses to budge
when it rains

Doors open & close
more like us
than we’d like to think
multiple lives
ring around rings
of unhinged days

Before the deadbolt
pierced its side
it was dressed in bark
with its own kind

Squirrels ran to its outstretched arms

Bluebirds twittered up & down
behind bright green wing shaped leaves

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wasn’t sure what I could say about my front door. I wrote and revised it in several sittings but was unsure of how to approach this piece. Eventually, I decided it might be best to let my front door speak for itself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel McGinn’s work has been seen in Silver Birch Press, Spillway, Sadie Girl Press, Lummox, Bank Heavy Press, The OC Weekly, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. He received his MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts at the age of 61, and his most recent collection of poems, The Moon, My Lover, My Mother & The Dog, was published by Moon Tide Press.