How to Open a Door

Photo by Nick Page on Unsplash

 

It’s really such a chore.
First: Put on your shoes.
No wait, back up and choose
socks thick and woolly
or cotton thin. Choose fully
aware that at the end is the door.
So perhaps your long fuzzy socks,
or those colored like phlox,
or socks with bold polka-dots?
Carefully arrange your thoughts
ere your feet hit the floor.
Second: Examine the shoes,
for again you must choose,
before you can grasp the handle.
Glass slippers or boots or sandals,
it all depends on what you intend
to find on the other side of the door.

Doorway

Magpie Tale 126
Shared with dVerse

The window was the answer.

It was a question I had always asked. What’s out there?
Mother Gothel never answered.
But she had to have the window. She had to go in and out.
And slowly the window brought my answer.

Out there were pears and apples.
Which came from trees, she let slip. I saw trees from my window so it wasn’t much.
But the trees that I could see never had pears or apples, so it was something.
Out there were dresses. They didn’t grow on trees.
Mother Gothel did not know how much she told me when she told me that.
When she told me how a dress was made, with impatience at my ignorance, she did not know she told me there were people like us beyond the walls of my tower.
I imagined other towers, with other girls.

Mother Gothel never knew I could see the men hunting. Nor did she know one of them sent a bird with a letter to me, through the window.
He told me everything of the world I longed to know. Letter after letter after letter.

Mother Gothel burned them when she found them. But it was too late. The window had brought me answers. When she left, raging, I was ready.

It had taken me a long time to learn those knots. The hunter’s pictures had not been very good. But I secured sheets and curtains and quite a few dresses together. And climbed out of the window, my doorway to the answer, what’s out there?

Beyond

Magpie Tale 122
shared with dVerse

I found a doorway this afternoon
Or maybe it was a window.
I thought the rain left only mud
But there it was, untouched and new.
A forest growing clear and strong
And I could hear the music in its leaves.
It seemed a shame to pass it by
Unexplored and left in memory’s drawer.
So I unlocked the door and went in
Or fell through the window, I do not know.
But I spent the hours there
And met the birds and every flower.
Danced with fairies and joined their feasts
Stopped in a tree and spoke with owls.
I met a unicorn too, and laughed under silver stars
And by their light returned home again.
Without locking the door
Or perhaps I didn’t close the window.
Never will I cease to look
For doorways and windows.
I’ll find them again I know
Beyond the mud to worlds untouched and new.

Behind These Doors

Magpie Tale #96

Shared with dVerse

You really want to come in here?
Really?
Are you sure you know what’s behind these doors?


Are you sure it’s only old garden tools
Shovels and rakes and the push lawn mower,
Broken pots nestled among spider webs?


Do you know that it’s not a dragon’s horde,
Gleaming gold and strands of pearls piled above clean white bones,
Rusted daggers and helmets and polished shields?


Are you sure it’s only the beach things,
The surfboard and colored towels
Buckets for sandcastles and shell collections?


Do you know that it’s not a magician’s hideaway,
Where you’ll find him bent over cracked leather spell books
Bubbling red potions and a talking raven for company?


Are you sure it’s only the winter supplies
A green snow blower, ice skates and snow shoes
The toboggans, boots, and sleds?


Do you know that it’s not a doorway to faerie,
A portal to emerald meadows where unicorns roam
An invitation to a dance that never ends?


Haven’t you ever wondered,
What else could be behind these doors?
Are you sure you want to know?