Words Above the Door

This is a space for books and words,
stories and poetry live here,
with enormous windows for watching birds,
cats and occasional deer.
The garden outside is wild and green,
a space filled with shrubs and trees,
while the inside breathes imagination;
when you enter, a line or a poem, please,
or a prayer for further creation.
Bric-a-brac fills all available space,
on the walls are photos and paintings;
a place for everything, everything in its place,
and I will be pleased to explain things.
Words above the door are a welcome embrace,
an invitation to join me in peaceful escape.

Kim M. Russell, 13th February 2024

Dora is our host for Tuesday Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub where, apparently, it’s written in stone.

She says that ‘from the beginning of history and beyond, we’ve wanted to leave our mark on the world around us’ and gives us examples of ‘clay or stone tablets of cuneiform, pictographs, and hieroglyphs’, the Ten Commandments… the walls of Pompeii, and gravestones. She also gives us poetic examples: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, Dante’s Divine Comedy and Rita Dove’s poem inscribed on a low wall or bern at the entrance to the West Garden of Washington, D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library (which houses the world’s largest Shakespeare collection).

Our challenge is to write a poem, as Dove was commissioned to do, and about the length of her poem, for a walled entrance that addresses and welcomes visitors into a space of our choosing, a location existing in physical reality or in our metaphysical imaginations.

Also linked to Mary’s ‘door’ prompt at What’s Going On? on 27th June 2024.

43 thoughts on “Words Above the Door”

  1. A lovely invitation, and one I would gladly take up on if only in my imagination. Love the inside/outside distinction and contrast, especially “while the inside breathes imagination;
    when you enter, a line or a poem, please,
    or a prayer for further creation.”
    Beautifully inviting poetry, Kim.

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    1. I haven’t been using my study much until recently because it was too cold in there and rather expensive to heat. But I’m back in there during the daytime.

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    1. Thank you, Mary. Yes that it the big bookshelf in my study that goes from floor to ceiling. I have two more bookcases in the dining room. I’m trying very hard to scale down, but I’m finding it very difficut!

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  16. A door into a library is always inviting. It occurs to me, we have a metaphorical “door” into the world of online poetry, too, which has opened the whole wide world to me.

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  18. “with enormous windows for watching birds,
    cats and occasional deer.
    The garden outside is wild and green,
    a space filled with shrubs and trees,”

    Paradise outside and inside as well with all the books. A perfect sanctuary, Kim.

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