The Revolving Door

Alfred Eisenstaedt

The Revolving Door

An old man stoops to fix his lady’s shoe
And what of him and her, of me and you?

My neck burns to counter my ineffable laze;
The Sun lowers. She surrenders her role
In a blood-orange bed, suicide-red.
The color of the abandoned and aborted.
The flash light of an overboard fright,

Alas, where is my heart that had once grown so high?
The clouds skate by like airplanes;
The time goes.

How many people have I been
In my desperate anarchy
In my frantic long-division?

Fifty voices crowd the broken room.

Curse this unrealized peace,
This unquenchable throat, so lost in nerves,
That knows not where to sing!

The water rises closer near the door
And fear unfastens like the violent undoing
Of a nation;
The fast unravel—


[copyright Taylor Roberts, 2006]