Doors to the Temple

The doors to the temple are closed.
Thick dark boards criss cross
with broad iron nails, making certain
of permanence, of strength,
a barrier between the rich colors
and worshipful spaces, and you.

You wait at the doors. Wait for them
to open. Listen to music, the chants.
Breath in the incense that leaks under the threshold.
Strain to hear the prayers within.

The temple reaks of age. Of antiquity,
Mortar crumbles through the bricks.
Moss grows on those same bricks.
Symbols, long lost in history are carved in the capstone.
You wonder at the symbols. Are they code
to secrets kept from you by these dark doors,
or simply lost?

What is it that draws you to this place.
What calls you?
What makes you sit outside the doors
closed shut, and lean into the dim sounds
that slip between the cracks.
You do not know. Only a strange certainty
that the holy lives in many places,
even here, on the outside, but whereever
the holy lives, you crave to be,
crave to share with other seekers,
a need to believe a God greater than you,
something beyond what we humans
work so hard to mold and capture,
is there somewhere. Perhaps even
just beyond this door, or the next. OR the next.

You sit at the foot of the door.
Tired. Drained by the sun. Worn by the rain,
Exhausted, you lean against the doors,
and they open.

About this poem

So many come back to their faith when things come undone, and even believing they do not deserve it, they come.

In my world. In my reading of scripture. That door is always open, even when it seems to those of us on the outside, to be forbiddenly closed.

Tom

PS; The picture is of an Indian temple replica. If you have not seen pictures of the Hindu temples, they are magnificent.