Door

Why should I care
Which way you go through me?

I am responsible only
For the dividing furniture

From the changeful weather,
The past from the future,

The dream from the waker.
Inside, outside,

It’s all one to me.
Who passes through one way

May come back the other way.
If what’s promised on one side

Is denied on the other,
You work it out then.

Being neutral, I choose
To stay just here.

Window

It is no more than an eyehole
On the outside scene
Making everything
– The snow, the runaway dog,
The boys brawling in the car
Skidding against the tree –
Content to be contained
Within a reasonable frame?
Or could it be

A casement dividing
A real observer from a view
Of untrammeled possibility,
Its pane connecting
A man in a room in
Steam heat and a battered chair
With his future
Which he could not see
Were it not there?

Perhaps it’s the lens that allows
Errant swift and swallows
In a downward swoop
Of their tumbling flight
To glimpse the man waiting
For the future to happen –
While he’s caged in time
They’re free to look in,
And its gift is insight.

by Daniel Hoffman