Dream Keys Traveling
by Odin Roark

A NY mantra,
renting the rentable,
moving the movable,
keying the keyable.

Apartments.

Four-wall-guardians of yesterday’s youth,
vacuous cellmates for aging loneliness,
remaining part of a cyclic maze,
all having a key,
urban life’s Rubik’s Cube
the forever next level climb.

Today’s the day.

“Two rooms”
“New paint”
“Clean window”
“No-squeaky floorboards”
a superintendent’s presentation,
the pitch of another absentee landlord pawn.

Move in.

Keys.
Entrance door.
Mailbox.
Apartment.
Laundry room.

All yours.

A windowsill vase of plastic roses,
your welcome to future faded memories,
the window to the people below,
your traveled city as roommate,
all through one window,
another glass darkly,
a gloriously bricked vertical alley,
vacuuming garlic, body odor, life, life and life,
to the street below.

Gotta love it.

Pea green layering
over cracked and peeling bygones,
your very own chipped-paint scrapbook,
a giant shoebox of gestating ghostly images,
once possessing your castle-keys of dreams,
now but reality’s lessons.

Settle in.

Struggle.
Dream some more.
Survive.
Stand at your redolent window.
Watch city-canyon updrafts
swirl your make-believe snowflakes,
carrying them skyward,
mixing with sparkling darkness,
where every star is yours.

Count the days.

Where light to be seen
will be owned by neighboring new towers,
the place where once immigrants came young,
left old,
where thrown cups and china,
christened walls,
and confinement’s anger and tears
found solace in the protection of an empty bathtub,
never forgetting,
This was their home.

Where pounding fists
rattled bathroom door hinges,
while a child hid beneath a bed
smiling tearful thanks
to a wanderlust roach
for keeping him company.

All yours now.

Here where a Sammy Glick got started
and an undergrad,
an engineer,
a radical leftist,
a piano teacher,
all touched,
all turned,
all once fingered your keys.

So…

Add your imprint,
become tomorrow’s remembered page,
of life's photo albums knowing no end
for this is Manhattan,
where old scenes will erupt,
sameness will repeat,
life will be teaching lessons,
Maybe help another live gratefully.

Then…

You too will pass the keys.
Take your turn piling worn memories at the curb,
mattresses always appreciated,
dressers and Lazy Boy recliners a bonus.

You’ll stand across the street,
watch the ever-smiling Super
hand the keys to the next tenant,
and then…

You’ll go…

Never to forget your contribution,
that left behind the next preparatory memory.

You’ll allow the coming year,
your next season of imaginings
to provide dreams of another home,
somewhere waiting.

Maybe with keyless entry?

Loneliness gone?