The Japanese Torii—the gates
to sacred groves and gardens
piously and ever gently touch
with a tap of a virtuoso musician
into the old wisdom that knew
that each letter is a gate
that calls in its own chosen
to come, to pass, and to find
their true selves behind
and so to become a part
of a line, a necklace
Fates and spirits weave,
just as the reverse is true too—
that each letter, when grasped
and more deeply understood,
is likewise such a gate to God,
a sign, a note by which the soul
is moved or even cloaked in splendor,
a delicately open entrance to a temple
or even into a chrysalis, crystal, pupa
of a divine gaze by which the soul
is winged and let to meet at last
with those seeing pupils
where what is eternal lives
on the other side—across.
And you too could see
how by these temples
and nature’s designs
the light has come
to hang and loiter
in the rustling leaves
and how in the Fall
all that lightweight glow
descends and then—
when no one else
keeps on watching—
some of it begins
to stir and soar and flutter
aloft—like a music played
in a swirl of sudden breeze,
just as these Torii—the gates
are here our anchors and,
suddenly, then are our sails
attaching us or the letter of yours
or mine—back heavenward, to the divine.
