To be at Home in the World…

The world its own doorway, wide as itself,

Welcomes the wanderer, a world away:

“Put your pack down, stay, stay,

My threshold comes to you today.”

Wait, wanderer, what welcome, this?

A home everywhere: nowhere;

Any may knock, any sleep there;

Entering, entering the air…

“You do not look but find the knob,

Wanderer: what more to do?

To live, to knock: my door follows you,

Your walking your walking through.”

Wait! Where the knob, where the bell?

An eternal search; torment, it meant,

As under the door, in inviting scent,

It emits your discontent. 

“How, I, more open? Any wider than me?

The message of that fragrance:

Having too much and wanting your presence,

I have become an entrance.”

Wait! The world a door, wide as itself?

Then your eyes must be wider than this!

Looking for it, all else must miss:

The world wants your eyes an abyss.

“The tongue never tasting cheek,

The eye blind to lids, air unfelt to trees…

Why should you have more sense than these

Of your life? I come with too much ease.”

Wait! Would you enter then, be “at home” –

A sixth sense, nothing other than unease…?

“Only the feeling most natural to me,

Where anything enters, needing no keys...”

Wait! From ease, unease? It, too much a home,

        Welcomes too silent and invisibly...

“But this, wanderer, the way of me:

I, the world, very gesture of letting be.”

What is a welcome one cannot flee,

O monstrous hospitality?

“Ah, again: that, not in me – in thee.”