I've always liked to read!! This is one of those skinny negatives that my mother's good Kodak with the bellows used to make before it sprung a light leak. I cannot really be reading it, must just be pretending, because when I made the photo VERY dark I could see this is a book of text with two columns. No illustrations. Can't quite read it, though.
The Back Door
The door through which we step out
into the past is an easy push,
light as the air, a green screen door
with a sagging spring. There's a hook
to unhook first, for there have been
incidents: someone has come up
out of the past to steal something good
from the present. We know who they are.
We have tried to discourage them
by moving from house to house,
from city to city, but they find us
again and again. You see them coming
sometimes from a long way off--
a pretty young woman, a handsome man,
stepping in through the back garden gate,
pausing to pick the few roses.
Ted Kooser
from Weather Central; University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994, page 81.
I hope you are not getting tired of Ted Kooser. . . I must reveal that we had EXACTLY that screen door which is so lovingly described here. In the photo, I am sitting on the porch of the house we rented when I was born. We bought the house next door, on First Street in Scotia, New York. The screen door let onto the back porch. The only different thing was that I didn't think then that the purpose of the latch was to prevent people from coming out of the past.
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