Skip to content

The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Unlocking Locks

I want to talk to the keeper
of the keys, the locksmith.
The one who designs locks
to keep things in and out.
Michael wants to fly
and laments his boy’s body.
He is locked in his
earth bound frame.

The bird is locked in its frailty,
with wings that cannot build.
The seed hovers in its shell
waiting for the one
who will bury it or break it open,
and I stand outside
the locks in me,
that chain my soul.

So I ask
the keeper of the keys,
why not lock all the locks away,
and see what the world becomes
without all its locks
that close things in and out,
and let things be
what they will be?

Published inIndex of all Poems