WOODEN DOOR

Tapping softly at your massive door

my words slip silent as mist down the long corridor

of night’s mute end,

tapping for that oath

we said we’d make

where earth meets heaven

This corridor long and dark

its three thousand doors

open to a night of three thousand years

My silent footsteps haunt like wind

leans daybreak’s chill against a window,

and dawn skims a statue’s marble chest

On the bed, last moonlight, its arc primordial,

dapples soft embrace

both joy and sorrow

As if swaying in a dream or cycling through time

the first quarter moon and the last quarter moon

dance a duet, their refrain

of today become tomorrow

Down the long deep corridor, I become fog,

and your great door

the silent exit from heaven and earth, from life