Beyond The Threshold

One room dark and the next one lit That is how the distance holds If you leave them both to the same thin light The corners trade what the doorway knows Keep the glass where it can see the hall Let the latch sit quiet in your hand Some nights the frame arrives before the wall Some nights the floor comes feared as door Past the threshold, praise the arriving dark Though it takes the shape of less to you The splendour rooms refuse The final line that does not conclude The order kept where measure thins The calm through which lesser light goes wrong What once was feared as worse than the closing shape The finished form no doorway keeps Take the longer route when weather stays indoors There are turns that hold and turns that shift Do not answer from the stair before the sound comes clear Height changes first in places like this Leave the post until the window loses depth Let the kettle stop before it sings Watch the seam where curtain touches pane Small errors ripen fast in ordinary things Past the threshold, praise the arriving dark Though it takes the shape of less to you The splendour rooms refuse The final line that does not conclude The order kept where measure thins The calm through which lesser light goes wrong What once was feared as worse than the closing shape The finished form no doorway keeps One chair turned inward steadies out the air One lamp left low keeps near from growing wide Say a name and hear how flat it comes The room learns which side is which inside Listen first. That still works here Not for warning now, but for the true There are pauses longer than the things that make them And they arrive before they pass through you You can keep a long time by these measures You can move as if the place still keeps its rooms Hand at the frame. Breath kept level Eyes on the seam while the lesser light thins through If "here" is said, it answers If "mine" is said, it does not stay Something listens before the moving starts Something keeps the dark that way Past the threshold, praise the arriving dark Though it takes the shape of less to you The splendour rooms refuse The final line that does not conclude The order kept where measure thins The calm through which lesser light goes wrong What once was feared as worse than the closing shape The finished form no doorway keeps One room dark and the next one lit Glass on the table. Hand at the frame Someone listens before they move Something listens and does the same