Let my last door open into the light of late spring.
May it be shadowed with the announcements of those who walked into darkness before me --
right foot disappearing first, body leaning into the unknown,
trailing hand making mostly
mysterious gestures: I'm all right or come along; it's what I
thought or it's not what I
thought.
If my last door does not accept spring, I'll offer a fall's stark light on the hand-hewn wood
lintel
where abstract snowfall casts cool gray shadows.
Let my last door be a familiar shape, but slightly reworked: perhaps an entrance, perhaps an
exit,
its pattern fabricated, as words are fabricated, to let me explore
the shoulder-wide rectangle
of experience I claim as my life.
Let me walk up close and peer in long. Let me decide I don't need to look. Let me stay where I
am a while longer in my small corner of the courtyard, intent on
giving pleasure as fast as I
take pleasure in this dusty sunlight.
Let a star shine through my last door.
Let me ride above the clouds and know somewhere, below, my last door is waiting, as someone
beyond the door, is waiting.
Let my animals, children, and friends, pour their lives across the paving stones I cross to find
my
last door.
Let the flowers lay themselves down if they wish beside my plain and simple door. Petals will
glow like a color wheel and the scent of honeysuckle, rose, and
orange blossom will
provide the toll of any crossing.
Through the last door, may my lover and I hold hands as long as we care to, as long as we can,
neither sure which side the other is on, nor aware of when or
where each of us has gone.
Let my last door be the one I chose to call my last -- let me not
go back on my words but accept them when they arrive
to greet me.
Let every bird I have ever admired -- like the mockingbird and sassy stellar jay, the anhinga
and
rare quetzal -- contribute to the happy indifferent cacophony from
a perch above my last
door.
Let me hang my worst impulses on a sliver of moon and sail it into the sky. Let the bony skull
of
my urgencies rise like the sun over high walls before I approach.
Let me regret and accept yet still turn onto the pathway toward this, my last door.
There is no curtain on my last door. There is no space to stand in or on. My last door will be
neither wood nor wall, neither all I imagine nor less than I can
comprehend.
My last door must be imagined now, so that all the days it takes me to find it, to figure it, to
fashion it, are given over to its attention, its understanding,
and its praise. |
