Doors Opening, Closing On Us
By Marge Piercy
Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But
while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters
most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place into another
one state to the other, boundaries
and promises and threats. Inside
to outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind
into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see
ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.