From a farmhouse summer I brought home,

To remember Vermont, a folding key,

Five inches open, at midshank a hinge

Key to a door to a hole to the sky.

For my pocket, a metaphor with no poem.

My key was hand-hammered, blade-thin,

One pinhead rivet through at the bend,

Two more at the finger-hold a

Shaped edge, neither ho beginning nor end

Around where a small heart had not been.

The image is easy enough to raise:

A man who made it, and carried it:

Brad Mclaughlin, Frost, Fred Cole:

What he locked in with the key, or out:

The lives of the house, the years of days:

The weathers around the world, of war,

Or peace: on soil-builders, on wall-

Menders, leaf-treaders, wood-piling men.

The image is raised, yet not so tall

As not to be looked on a star.

The key is the metaphor, and is all.

My key is handled too much to rust,

But sweat on iron has turned it dark.

The nick for thumbnail, when I must,

Opens it whole. The part is the whole.