Manifest Review

Cousin Barbara and I found a white wooden door

with once-golden knobs, corroded black hinges,

a raft for our play on the beach at Lake Erie,

and no one carted the door away.

We were seven. We left the door there nightly 

moored on that strip of beach and, hola,

returning each day we’d find it still there

It filled us with joy that it hadn’t been taken.

We felt a sort of religious awe

to leave our precious door all night

unclaimed, unprotected on the sand

and it waited for us — O, generous world!