Day 753 of the Daily Poems, and our poet Fiona Clark has in mind the elusive portals of childhood.
Lost portals
In childhood, portals were always elusive:
inside the wardrobe, the back
remained tantalisingly, woodenly
unyielding to small fingers
eager to scrabble their way through
to a hidden universe,
of snowy branches and a lantern’s glimmer,
where to be once a king or queen in Narnia
was to be a king or queen forever.
A painting of a tall ship in full sail,
failed to freshen to sea winds and racing waves,
in spite of restless yearning
for the salt tang and the foam-capped furrow
bearing the daring, high-masted Dawntreader.
No silver cloud drifted past a cliff-top
offering a magic carpet journey,
blown by the lion’s hot breath,
to the pinnacles of far Cair Paravel.
Even now we long for
for the soul’s wild fulmar flight on
warm supporting winds
to other, distant, hidden lands.
Although we are farther off from grace,
our prayers frail as falling leaves,
there may be – suddenly – a grove
of spotless Himalayan birches,
lifting their long shining limbs starward,
where the heath is grazed to soft stubble
by feral ponies, branches folding
a fretted basket of silence,
with a heart of silver light.
Or perhaps we stumble on a still point
in the turning world,
where the road from the village
crosses the river gliding darkly towards
low-hanging willows,
over the two weirs, by the old mill,
where the white owl flies at dusk,
and the lion’s mane shakes golden
in the last fiery foliage of winter’s trees.
Fiona Clark