gold, round
it has felt a thousand hands
in sixty years

tomorrow it will be
replaced, the dead door
along with it

the old brass globe
knows nothing of gentrification;
its desecration of memory:

the carpenter who bore its hole
the first child to turn the **** to play;
the last man to yank it in anger

when he felt the bowels of defeat,
the bane of bankruptcy--the effluent epiphany
of eviction

how many tales began with
the spinning of the circle, the opening
of the door, letting in the light

tomorrow, and tomorrow, the door,
the handle, will rest in the landfill, the
graveyard of myriad doorknobs

all with their own stories of auspicious
beginnings, mysterious twists and turns--
plots thickened by the hands of time