Weathering the Front Door Martin Galvin            Originally published in Issue XVIII of Vulgata, February, 2008

Ah.  For the deep heaven’s sake, 
I’m fed up entirely.
Let’s have an Irish door, at least, 
if we can’t have the brawn and the stout
and the smell of peat in the house.

You pick the paint, I’ll slap it on,
a cardinal red lacquered sheen
with brass to announce and brass 
to let in and the hinges too, brass,
swinging as bold as the money
down the street.

Remember how we practiced for the wedding 
after the last sun storm of earliest spring
had sworn off and headed up to Boston.
Took the door down, we did, the way it went up,
flipped it flat on the spring onions starting to
sprout, waxed it so our feet would shine and snap.  

To qualify our steps for heaven, 
when late spring springs its tricks,
we’ll take down the door again  and put 
our dancing shoes on, the taps of them
beating a jig and a reel into the air, give us
a walking out together above the dirt 
like we are more than man and woman.

It’s a way of letting the neighbors know
of the merry mischief to come, this taking down
the door.  It’s a way of letting the feet fly
that would be stuck and held in the mud.
We’ll only be taking it down at last to celebrate
the goings-on of those worth going on about:

but when we do we’ll drop it right outside
the threshhold so the bride and groom can reel
from the garden path into the house and bed
can hear the young ones tapping up their heels
and toes  and us ourselves singing so boisterous loud 
the words echo off the ground and the answering sky.
telling us the what of why we have such ways to set us
free.