Doorways

by Jenna K Funkhouser

Wind ripples off

    the shaggy tops

of mesquite trees

    and threads a ribbon

of bending grass. The ground

   is stern and red like brick

except for the man-made trail

   of gravel snaking

into the horizon.

There is a doorway

   in everything. This

is what the man

   who was nearly my grandfather

was saying

   in so many words.

Men had lived here,

   generations scraping

a life off the hard, red soil;

   hope threaded through death

in weddings and hayings

   and the soft ears of new

calves every spring.

There was a name

    for everything and the hot earth

carried its ghosts and stories

    like the hidden wells we searched

for under the blue grass.

It was a baptism of the mind,

   a clothing of your eyes in the names

and histories which became the keys

   to unlock the doors. 

Then were the layers of story

   stacked among the slow,

craggy mountains

   and the wild plains

and the world became a cup

   into which generations had poured

the unadulterated meaning

   of their lives.

The cracked blue jug

   on the porch steps

and the old barn

   and the larkspur planted

by grandmothers past

are not happenstance, any more

   than the crickets that sing

you to sleep in the summer nights.

They exist as part

    of a speaking whole,

fragments of a story

    we can choose to exit,

but can never be untold.

Jenna K Funkhouser is a poet and artist living in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, and As It Ought To Be, among others; her first book of poetry, Pilgrims I Have Been, was released in October 2020.