ROBERT
KELLY

THE DOOR AGAIN

opens. Light
lets itself in.
And what more?
I wrote the saga
of the opening door,
who or what
dared to come in
or stood there
and just stared
or glanced through
and walked away.

2.
I still sit here
stunned by these variations
possible, stunned
and scared when I remember
the terrifying two-way passage
a door allows, encourages even,
tempts me to be gone
from this place into the sci-fi
land of Out, where they
are waiting, a letter in their hands.

3.
I went there once,
raindrops on the windshield,
bare trees shimmered green.
We drove towards town,
two deer at roadside,
an eagle over. Red-tailed hawk
on a branch watching.
Could this be real?
Is this what a door does
when you listen to the charm
of its softly swaying music
and go through?
We bought bread and eggs
then Hurry home Hurry home
the brick wall said, Pray you have
a key to your own glad door.

3 April 2023

The glamour lives inside.
A Gaelic word I think,
the spell something seen
casts on the eye of the seer.
Something like that.
We live in witchcraft
though we know it not.
And witches are often
the kindest people, relieve
the tedium of the norm
with spectacular displays
of you’ve-never-seen-anything
like-this before. Shimmer
and shake, sole and slippery,
flies past too fast to focus on,
wraps round you soft as paisley.
Glamor. Gladness of the actual
seen for the first time clear.

2 April 2023

The ointments,
the oils called essential
because they bear
the essences of their origin,
flower, sap, wounded tree
or musk of beast, and these
she brings to such a quiet desk
and writes with them
into tiny vials or just dabs
some on her wrist and raises
it to me sometimes
so I can read it too
the essences interwoven
in a new odor never before
smelled in this green world–
her magic of weaving
ancient ointments into
the utterly fresh and new.
You see why I call what
she does writing–and each
new scent deserves a name
and sometimes hours later
it will say itself in a dark room.

1 April 2023

Sanctuary, symmetry,
the woman brought
the mountain home with her
the way they do,

the way they do,
geology is one long song.
we learn to sing it
not just with our legs,
clouds explain canyons,
the lake explains the sky,

deep strata of uncounted years
specify this rock wall,
anticline by river, road
a blasphemy through solid rock.

2.
She brought the mountain home
and held it on her knee,

take care of things
the crows kept saying, the way
they do to wake us, make us
do the right thing,

now wake
the stone they cawed
and she did. So quiet
for so hard a thing it spoke,
said its name, said clear
soft things about sleep and time
and who am I and who are you
before she let it fall sleep again–
its long work not nearly done.

1 April 2023

Why is American money green,
what does it tell us
about our dreams?
Green is peaceful and
soft permission,
quiet Sundays after Pentecost,
moss on gravestones, merry eyes
of Scottish girls and tiger cubs.
Be green as you can
the dollar tells us,
I am the first President
and there is no other.

1 April 2023