Doorway To The Woods Poem by Gordon R Menzies

A low fire of silver birch branches, broken
hissing softly in a hot river stone fireplace
bread is toasting and tea is warming, and
outside, beyond the doorway to the woods
a doorway flung wide, wild and welcoming
so the cool autumn air curls round the bed
and the wide world follows where it leads
the sudden wings of ravens pumping past
calling to mates and their kin in the green
red squirrel wakes, sings his barking lyrics
courting for nuts with night black eyes, his
ladies watching from high wooden towers
waving their veils of chestnut and white
I lay in wool blankets and dream fragment
the soft skins of sheep and sad longings
twenty steps from the pine woods calling
deep and calling in grey shadowed voices
a layering of post and lintel, lintel and post
doorways of trunk and branch, calling grey
she, it, they…wait for me on the other side
I will rise and pass through one of these
I will bring my songs and not look behind