The Back Door

The door through which we step out

into the past is an easy push,

light as the air, a green screen door

with a sagging spring. There’s a hook

to unhook first, for there have been

incidents: someone has come up

out of the past to steal something good

from the present. We know who they are.

We have tried to discourage them

by moving from house to house,

from city to city, but they find us

again and again. You see them coming

sometimes from a long ways off —

a pretty young woman, a handsome man,

stepping in through the back garden gate,

pausing to pick the few roses.