THE EARTH DOOR
By John Herlihy

The departing soul cast one last look,
At a sight he thought never to brook.
The earth door hinges were slightly ajar,
Allowing one last glance from a nearby star.

Now is the time to bid a sad farewell;
The Angel has come and broken life’s spell.
Quick, the earth is receding, smaller in view,
Turning into a marble of multi-colored blue.

A sleepy dusk climbs slowly over the horizon.
My celestial skiff slips away from its rounded shore,
Floating without splashing, innocent, ageless.
The landless craft mounts the tide into the open sea of sky,

Into a darkness not fully dark, into a depth not fully deep,
Into a universe brimming with phantom stars,
Reaching toward the Great Northern Lights,
The Polar Star pointing its ray to the forelands of Heaven.

Under the escort of knowing birds,
The curious pilgrim sails into the ebony blue-black,
Far from the solitary grave where grass turns brown,
Where the wind blows wild and free,

Where the trees have nothing more to say,
Where the sun burns everything dry,
Where the borrowed light of the moon stirs emotions,
As though touched by Merlin’s magic wand.

The earth door is creaking a doleful note;
The earth itself will soon be but a mote.
Let us take one last melancholy look,
Before destiny closes the leaves of my own personal book.

Light shines upon the lake as a million speckled suns;
Doves are in flight painted feathers against the wind;
Apple trees shed their blossoms awaiting their fruit;
Weeping willows bow in deep prostration to the wind.

Miraculous rainbows are born but never die;
Crystal snowflakes fall silently but never land;
Secrets are revealed and mystery shows its true face;
Revelation awakens the mind; illumination breaks the heart.

Emotions pour forth on the human plane,
Not as futile expressions of the listless body,
but as luminous revelations of the conscious soul,
with wisdom that enlightens and makes a person whole.

From earth, the sun door lies ajar,
Lending hints of higher mysteries in the nearing distance.
Humans see the sun door as the “remembered gate”,
Passed thru once from the presence of the Transcendent.

He Who creates and He Who destroys,
He Who gives and He Who takes away,
Inside a universal realm of suns, moons, and stars,
And last but not least, our planet Earth.

We are acolytes and journeyman of the Grand Designer,
On a journey of departure and return,
In a universe that gives to all its inhabitants
The breath of angels and the light of stars.

My heart flies heavenward borne on a kite,
Weightless now and at the mercy of the wind in the night.
The final leave-taking has yet to arrive,
But I am ready in advance for the coming journey to survive.

I will now bid good-bye to this world in advance,
Other worlds to conquer; other mysteries to enhance.
They lie in wait in every distant corner, on every celestial shore;
They now deserve my fullest attention, like a lion’s roar.

Good-bye distant world; you are no longer my mother,
I now roam the far heavens in search of the Other.
My true home lies in the holy shine of midnight light.
The earth door closes silently and disappears into the night.