In reverse
it’s a carefully scripted play,
and looking back
you see all
the parts you could have played.
And did play.
And those you didn’t.
And roads untraveled,
and those worn down
to hard dirt,
and ones that ran
dangerously alongside cliffs,
and under waterfalls that
sometimes bathed you
or sometimes nearly drowned you.
And doors that opened.
Easy doors,
and trapdoors,
and heavy double steel doors
that you pushed on forever until
some light spilled through between
the crack and you could
see the other side and
damned if there wasn’t a door
there, too.
And somewhere
(you don’t remember where)
you threw away the script
because you discovered
you can’t live in reverse,
and with the toss went
the parts and now it
strikes you, in a blinding
moment of perfect freedom,
that all this time -
all this time -
all this time -
you
were you.
I haven’t read a poem of yours that I didn’t like, rainey. Though I do read processism in at least a couple… I keep that to myself.
Besides the title (the number weirds me out for personal reasons, but I figure it’s somebody’s birthday poem?), and besides the “you don’t remember where” (when you throw away the script, it is something you never forget) this poem sums up my self thread.
But, do you think the wording of the poem prevents one from seeing that there is a door inside themselves that is not external to the self? As in, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” – Jesus.
I’ll be gone from ILP for a while, in case you reply and I don’t reply back immediately.
Thanks, Ichthus. Yes, I guess you could call it a birthday poem. Mine, specifically.
Actually my thinking is that none of the doors (or roads or cliffs or whatever else) are external to the self. We build them and we tear them down as it suits. Does the wording suggest that we are prevented from seeing this? I don’t know. I expect it depends on the reader. Or, more generally, beyond the poem itself, and as a friend of mine put it just recently, the experience depends on the experiencer. There are times when I think we’re all prevented. Until we listen for the knock. And then, as I recall the rest of your verse, “…if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him.â€
Ah, yes, the experience depends on the experiencer.
On the matter of “hearing”, it is my feeling that perhaps whether we are capable of removing the walls and doors and whatever manner of suffering and pleasures we create, and how closely we listen, depends entirely on the frequency that we vibrate on.
) but I felt this one made the grade - a very well-versed piece! 
