Encounter

by Jenna K Funkhouser

There is no end of them, it seems: these doors

Within doors, propped open in their own good

Time, containing ancient worlds within.

Down the same street you’ve lounged for months,

One appears now: brown and weathered, it gives

No hint of the three chapels you find as you step

Past the small candle stand and into the narthex

Laid with the old tiles holding the waves of the sea.

The woman, tiny and wrinkled, welcomes you with a wide

Smile and a smoking tumbler of incense, rattling off

The names of saints who are still stranger to you, its three

Dark chapels tucked together like the seeds of pomegranates

Glistening with a little gold-flecked light. She busies herself

In the deepest corner with its weathered wood, chanting

And wafting blessings out the window, the keeper of these caves

And their memories, a flame holding the flame alive.

It’s always the way of things: the door you came expecting

To open, locked and deserted, while one nearly invisible

Suddenly opens its wealth to you. This assumption that life

Needs no explanation, only openings: yours to duck

And enter with merely the sign of the cross, if you choose.

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Jenna K Funkhouser is a Pacific Northwest based storyteller and poet. Her poetry has been published by The Ekphrastic Review, As It Ought To Be, Ekstasis, and Spiritus Journal, and is forthcoming at The Penwood Review, among others. Her second book of poetry, Bright Inhabited Lives, was published by Kelsay Books in June 2024.