Doors opening, closing on us by Marge Piercy

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 21, 2015   Doors opening, closing on us   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.            Copyright © 2015 by Marge Piercy. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “The poem actually started when I was thinking about the use of gates in the Yom Kippur service. I was thinking that doors are more concrete somehow as an image of going from one state or another, one era, one phase of one’s life to another—because you can’t see beyond a door when it’s shut. There can always be a surprise on the other side.” —Marge Piercy   Marge Piercy is the author of Made in Detroit (Knopf, 2015). She lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.   Photo credit: Ira Wood Most Recent Book by Piercy   Made in Detroit (Knopf, 2015) "Change" by Carl Dennis "Time Passes" by Joy Ladin "Current" by Alan Soldofsky Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038