Light falls on the door in an oblique plane of cream
like something in Vermeer, and comes into this room,
to be met by red and blue Fisher-Price disarray.
Out in the yard, bare oak branches sway
in the warm April breeze. A red jacket lies thrown
over a cream chair, where Dr. Seuss sits on loan
from the downtown library.
Here are all the books
he carefully thumbs; here is the bedroom mirror he looks
at in the morning; here are the blue stairs he loves to climb
with unsteady but careless steps. Life is here, and time
has little meaning in the abundance he provides.
This home’s narrow rooms scarcely contain his wide-ranging strides,
as he considers the territory he finds day by day.
He waves his hand and epiphanies forth what he may.
Just over there, for instance, beyond the lighted door,
is the world he has created, creates, with every Word:
Door, Light, Sun, Tree, Upstairs and Down, the manifold
outsplashing of the thing-ness streaming forth from of old.
Angels shine in the oak, as for Blake, beyond the lighted door
and announce mortal hope, Life Incarnate, once more.
He creates. He proclaims. What he says is, is.
The paradox: Eternity within Time. Always, he lives.
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