They can be overtures
conducting us into new rooms,
banquet halls for boundless charity,
or closet-size war rooms
for miraculous praying.
Or they can sound the devil’s knocker.
Knocking, knocking, knocking
by hench sinners seeking
hibernation stuffed with their thick sins.
But the hours here are lean and
lightless—no sky to look up to.
Not even darkness is visible.
Our bodies are doors, too. Mouths swinging
open in song or villainies. Arms spread apart,
great lodgings for welcome. Or folded
in scowls, cell-blocked selves. Fences
around our hearts, latched and locked,
to keep others and us out of the sheepgate.
Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published more than 40 books on Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams as well as fifteen collections of poetry, among them Benedict’s Daughter: Poems (Wipf and Stock, 2017), Wholly God’s: Poems (Wind and Water Press, 2021), Mapping Trauma: Poems about Black History (Third World Press, 2023), and Evangeliaries: Poems (New York: Angelico, 2024).