....A wonderful poem, to picture, to ponder, to contemplate.

The Door

Too little
has been said
of the door, its one
face turned to the night’s
downpour and its other
to the shift and glisten of firelight.

Air, clasped
by this cover
into the room’s book,
is filled by the turning
pages of dark and fire
as the wind shoulders the panels, or
unsteadies that burning.

Not only the storm’s breakwater,
but the sudden frontier to our concurrences, appearances,
and as full of the offer of space as the view of a cromlech is.

For doors
are both frame and monument
to our spent time,
and too little
has been said
of our coming through and leaving them.

Charles Tomlinson 1927-