The Wood Has Many Doors Poem by Sheena Blackhall

The wood has many doors
Walk in. Bring your empty day and fill it with trees

Bend down on your two stiff knees
Stuff chanterelles or cones into a dusty bag

The owl has drawn the blinds on his wide eyes
His window of air will open again in moonlight

Firs are talking in riddles, dropping their needles
Onto the orange and tawny trampled path beneath

By the loch, a heron meditates on fish
In his grey Zen cloak, one leg frozen in zazen

Nothing is happening, nothing that you can see
Ants reshuffle a pack of leaves
On the edge of your eyes’ periphery

Are you surprised how old and fat you have become?
Are you surprised how life has leaked away unnoticed?

Stay. Leave. Linger. It’s all one to the stone
By the badgers’ trail. The clouds dissolve
And reassemble, ever the same but different