Things that Open

I think of things that open;
bright win­dows, the wings of birds,
old locks and prophet­ic books,
our eyes and thoughts and minds;
As songs, as scenes and plays, as sto­ries open,
as a pause opens an inevitable conversation,
as bonds between us will open, releas­ing us
so that yet anoth­er way can open;
As a pas­sage­way and the com­fort of a room can open
so that you might turn just to see
her face open into a smile and the lush rose opening
between her legs.

The spir­it, too, opens reveal­ing a lost self,
and the heart and the arms and the heav­ens open
and rain pours down into the open mouths
of chil­dren in laugh­ter or in hunger;
And the dying in their final sec­onds, they also
Open them­selves at last and for good.

Each day opens and then swings shut again,
each only a blos­som hon­or­ing its own transcendence;
As for­got­ten mem­o­ries will return to open the secrets
and break the mir­rors that make us who we are.
All things, real­ly, then are just por­tals opening
from this world into many others.
They are all hands before us open­ing, and in so doing
are so much more than hands;
As wounds and our tears open us,
as the uneasy peace we silent­ly and ragged­ly carry
opens a pos­si­bil­i­ty for some larg­er peace
we are still too closed to imagine.

Time itself at every sin­gle moment opens,
shat­ter­ing each crys­tal life into the void;
As all things we are sure of turn hol­low in time,
as we sim­ply open up
and our ears become final­ly and tru­ly open,
so that we can hear and grate­ful­ly receive,
as if in the begin­ning, our own purest voic­es of love and truth,
and behind them and not far off in that holy place
the frag­ile, beau­ti­ful, eter­nal notes
that con­stant­ly and like any water
pour clean­ly away.

Hear Dan read this poem.