I insert the key into the venerable door
behind which home has sat, solid
as an old oak, for 103 summers now,

though I have spent a mere 38 of them
as its owner. I like to think of myself
as the caretaker for now, though

on sticky summer days I wish for
a property manager to call when
the front door will not budge,

when I stand and turn the key
from right to left, and back again,
wondering if my aging brain

has forgotten how to operate a lock,
when I am literally locked out, and
I do not have a key to the back door,

which the devoted housekeepers,
bless their protective hearts, have
locked, though I asked them not to.

When all that conspires to keep
me out of house and home,
I consider my options for entry,

until it comes to me that heat
and humidity make the old door
swell, and that, combined

with a damp wood floor, means
that, with luck, a good shove might
open it. Two good shoves later,

it gives way, and once inside, I
inhale the scent of the long-gone one
whose presence gently lingers.

“Thank you, Clifford,” I say, smiling
at his husbandly voice in my head
suggesting that I hunt down

that back door key and hide it
in a place where I might be able
to locate it in a future pinch.

Because inevitably sticky
situations call for resourceful
solutions, perhaps even

a little force instead of our
inclination toward a gentle push
as we make our way back

into the familiar, the place
of memories, one that we
think of, for now, as home.