Dreaming Door
for Don

You brought donuts in the morning of our first days and
we watched the great rivers through my South Side windows/everything
swelling, we ate in the turquoise kitchen and opened the dreaming door:
our Pittsburgh rolling by on the coal barges, the P&LE carting steel
to the still-rising cities of the West, a couple speedboats
running the dirty summer Monongahela,
you on your way to work. I said no one’s ever
been this nice to me as I walked you the 52 steps down
from my third floor apartment, you tilted your head,
looking at me in a way I’d never seen:
like I was the most sublime person,
your blue eyes seeming truly puzzled:
I haven’t even started to love you yet,
and at the door the world barreling through—
this time with gifts, fierce fires,
and planets of luck.

-poem by: Jan Beatty

(given on 03/29/08; returned on 01/27/09)