The door, for instance.
Open or closed, either will do.
It might be rain. Rain
that stains everything
a darker version of itself.
Or sun that bleaches it.
It’s possible, too,
that what you’re looking for
isn’t there. Never has been.
But you knew that. Every day,
the thing you want
eluding you, making it
larger, more impossible.
Always almost there.
As near as the sky.
As far away, too.
Roger Mitchell’s most recent book is LEMON PEELED THE MOMENT BEFORE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, 1967-2008, published by Ausable Press. He lived in Milwaukee from 1968 to 1975.
