Poetry Thursday - Doors

Doors


The carpenter came
this week.
She finished the two small jobs
we had asked of her.
She told me the solid wooden door
I had found on the street
for my room
would fit just fine –
and it did.

Downstairs
she took the back door
from its hinges
planed the edges and
aligned it right,
hung it plumb
so the bolts slide
into the strike plate,
flush.
Now the lock turns
easily.

I can go out to the garden, now.
Sweet smelling curls of wood
have fallen among the purple violets.
I can close the door to my room
lie in the patch of east sun
that laps across the floor.

And I wonder,
that I never thought how all the while
what I needed was so simply
this:
a door, to the outside
that opens
a door, to the inside
that shuts.

~ Becky Birtha

This poem by my friend Becky Birtha is one that I come back to again and again. I hope you find something in it for you as well.