The Key to Nothing

I found an old key to nothing the other day. I gave it to Gene to

play with. He uses it to pretend he's driving the car.

Johnny Wink, in conversation

I imagined you finding it in dust,

cradling the curious figure in your palm-

an antique house-key, bluntly cut and plain,

that had outlasted air and sun and rain

who knows how long? Useless. But who could just

pitch it to limbo again without a qualm?

-A device as wild, improbable, and remote

as a druidic cross, or a bronze eighth-note.

I have two like it and a small bronze bell

in a little cedar box somewhere myself.

What is it I have held on to so long?

The burden of some old, fabulous song-

how all were balked by one cruel door, until,

plucking a skeleton from its closet shelf

(after the battering heroes had tricked and tried),

a child with a lost magic flung it wide?

Partly, perhaps. And possibly some dream

of a white, original door, the innocent valve

on a country family... .

Steps leading to air,

now, a ragged trim of jonquils: the failing square,

in weedy afterimage, of home.

Is that door's lock a riddle rust will solve

below the earth in darkness, or else annul,

a cipher now forever insoluble?

Question and answer, lock and key. You meant

no theory, meant only a turn of phrase.

You didn't know that phrase would open on

unmeasured realms for me, like those your son

cranked up, twisting a naive instrument

in unseen channels: himself on far highways,

running to manhood in the rising hills,

where nothing waits, and its reciprocals.