the back door

opens onto the lane, the bins, the garden's rougher half, and a thin path worn by repetition between the kitchen step and the gate. plain pine, oiled, lower than the front door by an inch. no bell, only a knock that the custodian can identify by sound.

through it pass the milk, the bread, the post, the cat, the smaller of the two cooks after a quarrel, the bin-empty boys on tuesdays, and once a year a walker who has misread the map. nobody formal arrives this way. the chalk-mark by the handle is the milkman's tally for the week.

its sound is the latch first, then a slow scrape — the door reluctantly clearing the worn flagstone beyond. in winter, footsteps on gravel arrive at it as a kind of soft applause. the keeper hears the gate too, twenty yards off, and knows by the count of seconds who is on their way.

field-note · the chalk-mark wears off in october rain and is rewritten by the milkman, who has never been seen writing.