Promptly Poetry

Portal

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Portal

Somewhere in the forest stands a door,
standing free, enigmatic, without walls,
questioning, stirring something deep
within us, a whisper of portals, gateways
and other worlds. Lewis was right,
we’ve made a modern mythology
that links as a chain of mystery
our reading and learning and so to our souls.
Who can see the door without being moved
and drawn to open it, to see what lies within?
In whose heart does the word “Narnia”
not speak itself from a childhood memory?
Twice was this symbol, the portal to nowhere,
employed as an image to inhabit our minds,
once for the Telmarines to return to their land,
and at the end of the world as a gateway
to heaven. All life has rushed through that doorway,
the story contracted to a single moment,
meaning condensed to this narrow entrance,
constriction in the hourglass of being
through which we all must pass,
one way or another, the blessed and the damned.

And here in the forest stands a door,
silent and brooding with what lies beyond.
Who can resist the urge to try it,
to turn that handle, to view the mystery it hides?

Line Count: 26
Free Verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, 2020
Prompt: a minimum of 12 lines inspired by the image of a door in the forest.