After the Rain, Facing East from a Red Door

After the Rain, Facing East from a Red Door

The sound of rain on my bare shoulder—

I had put the world's small voices away

and stood beneath a falling that required

no answer but the stillness of the clay.

The west was shut with curtains thick and grey.

And then—what hand split heaven's sealed decree?

The dying sun hurled all its furnace back

across the dome of possibility,

and lit a bridge above the mountain's black.

I have been told the colors of that span.

I have been told what emerald and rose

and violet do to the eyes of man.

But in the east, above the peaks that keep

their ancient watch, the arch blazed out a hue

I have no borrowed word for. And I wept.

The rain filled up the hollow of my ear.

The door behind me held its patient red.

And I thought of all the light I cannot see,

and all the light I see that goes unsaid,

and how the storm had made a gift for me

of silence, and of something overhead

that only I and one beloved dead

might name together, watching the arc set

into the mountain's deep and darkened net.

I spoke aloud into the dripping leaves.

The word was old. It meant the world receives

whatever you can offer—color, breath,

the slant of seeing that outpaces death.

And standing on my own swept stone, I knew

the goddess of the west light saw it too.