Doors

by Alethea Eason

I keep the door open
to listen to my mother's breathing.
The doors are slowly closing
in her mind. A spool of thread
unwinds between us from
the bedroom to the couch
where she sleeps, the aging arc
we ride upon made from the silence
where God loves to dwell.

We write in the prose
of another day lived on Earth, a bingo game
where little doors close one by one
over the numbers on the board.

Outside the sirens bleed
into the night as doors
of life and death open and close.
The doors of imagination
are weary and we repent
our ignorance and unnatural
innocence. I listen to my mother
sleeping and my heart
becomes a door.

* * * * *

Alethea Eason is the author of three novels, Hungry, Starved, and Heron's Path. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared in www.delsolreview.com, Lamplight Magazine, The Fictional Cafe, The Episcopal Cafe, the anthology The Kindness of Strangers, and ironsoap.com, among other journals, websites, and magazines. She was an educator in California and Chile, and has offered classes called Renew Your Muse dealing with intuitive, creative and spiritual expression, especially for those who feel art does not live inside of them. It does!