Day 2,318: Inauguration Poem

According to Wikipedia: "January was named after the Roman god Janus. Janus is also the Roman word for door. The god Janus had two faces which allowed him to look forwards into the coming year and backwards into the past year."

Janus

By Katy Jacob

1. The Door

It's not just the
opening or closing,
but all of it,
the slow, torturous creaking,
frigid air being let in,
the space the rats walk through,
the slam, the memory of steel
in the soft rotting wood,
the whole thing unhinged,
a knock knock knocking
incessant in the night,
it’s an opaque passageway
to everything unseen,
no way in and no way out,
and winter’s black boot
on the other side.

2. God of Two Faces

It isn’t a story of opposites,
not so much comedy and drama,
black and white, weeping and rejoicing.
No, it’s the way the welcome sun
blinds you from the snow,
the lakes that turn into
roads and resting places,
the extra light that lets you
see every bit of mud and decay;
it’s everything that’s trapped beneath
but will be dead by spring thaw.
It’s not so much looking forward and back
as it is not knowing where to look
or how or with whose eyes.
It isn’t the shock of the jagged scar down the middle
reminding you that our faces are nothing but newborn bones
but how easy it is to look, and to look away.

It’s a door, it’s a man with two faces, it’s
a God from an empire that destroyed itself,
it’s as similar and distant as
any other Friday in January,
the beginning of something unknown,
and the end of something else.