David Coursin

The Patient Window				3/25/2006
	

Of the many things
	I like
About poems
There is none deeper in my bones
	than the way a good one
	walks me down a long hall
		whispering from the start
		about the view waiting
			at that far window,
Then turns us through a door
	into a room
	glazed and intricate as porcelain painted with a sure hand
	but untouchable
		 beneath the fired surface,
Except for the curved handle on another door 
Opening
	with the weightlessness of fine balance
	set just so,
		 on the hinges 
		 of a carpenter 
			who paid careful attention to every move,
Including the steps we take down these porch stairs into 
	a pensive meadow
		with its quiet animals
		accepting us into their kingdom
			with one eye free to wander
			while the other never leaves us
Asleep in the afternoon sun
	floating close enough to grasp it as the knob
We turn to open 
	the last step
	towards 
		the patient window.

				-- David Coursin

David is a physician, a painter and a poet who is finding his way.