Poems for the Last Working Lift

How it begins

GROUND

The lift arrives a little below the floor.

We have all learned to lift one foot higher.

Nobody calls this an accommodation.

Nobody writes it in the minutes.

We simply do the small uneven thing that lets a neighbor enter.

ONE

Mrs. Bell brings oranges.

The smell reaches me before the doors open.

Her son sends money and telephones on Sundays.

She says this as if reporting two separate kinds of weather.

I hold the door while she finds her key.

There is no button for the time it takes to stop expecting someone.

THREE

The delivery boy apologizes to the parcel when he drops it.

I tell him it has heard worse.

He laughs with his whole tired face.

For six floors we are two people who have not failed at every part of the day.

SIX

The committee says the lift is inefficient.

Too old. Too expensive. Too often waiting for people who cannot hurry.

I have worked here thirty-one years.

There are phrases a person learns not to take personally.

There are mornings the machine does better at this than I do.

SEVEN

Leila brings a screwdriver and a sandwich cut in half.

She is not an engineer.

She says those are different problems.

We sit beside the open panel while the repairman speaks gently to the wires.

Below us, someone starts up the stairs.

Then someone else.

For the first time, I hear how far home is.

RETURN

When the doors close, the small mirror keeps one piece of every face.

Mine has grown old in that silver square.

Tomorrow, if the repair works, the lift will not need my hand beside the gate.

Leila asks whether I will still come down.

I press ground.

The button lights as though it has been waiting for a question it can answer.