Listening with half an ear, I was passing Lowe's headed quickly back to the school when Garrison Keillor read Jim Harrison's poem "Larson's Holstein Bull" -
Death waits inside us for a door to open.
Death is patient as a dead cat.
Death is a doorknob made of flesh.
Death is that angelic farm girl
gored by the bull on her way home
from school, crossing the pasture
for a shortcut. In the seventh grade
she couldn't read or write. She wasn't a virgin.
She was "simpleminded," we all said.
It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars.
She's lived in my memory for sixty years.
Death steals everything except our stories.
It was a delayed reaction, but I rolled the third line over and over in my head for a few seconds until I physically shuddered. I knew what Harrison meant: I could anticipate what a "doorknob made of flesh" would feel like in my hand - reaching out, expecting cold metal and instead finding warm (slightly warm?) skin, thin skin, covering harder bone underneath. Same way it feels to touch someone's hand, or elbow, or jawline, minus the positive emotional component.
There's much more to the poem, but I never forgot that line. I searched out the poem and wrote it down in my print journal - my handwriting on that third line even scratchier than normal. Occasionally, in my head, I'll hear Keillor read it - his voice matter-of-fact, like an everyday experience. It always invokes a shudder.
For me, the impact lies not just with imagining the grotesque description, but also in the symbolism regarding death. You reach out, expecting something normal, and instead experiencing something terrifying. Such is the reminder that life goes on. It's difficult to realize that when you die, life will continue. Just as difficult a realization is that life continues even when you're living. The difference being that when you're alive, and everything seems regular, it might not be. Life presses onward and onward, and if you expect normality - the standard, everyday brass doorknob - sometimes you grab hold of something else altogether.
