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Three Flakes on the Front Door
by Barbara Leonhard

Front doors, gateways to stories
held in the arms of lovers.
Brides and babies travel
over thresholds that welcome
spring’s warm breeze, summer’s first bees,
autumn’s tumbling leaves, winter’s freeze
for child play in drifts of snow
cushioning the stalwart door,
where Mystery gifts

three flakes, cut-out lives
of transient travel
through passageways to greet
weddings, rituals, blessings,
celebrations, holidays,
date nights, lives guarded
by peepholes
and double-bolt locks
until the last flake
melts.

Clothed in frayed lives,
the dead flutter as birds
released
from their cages
out the front gate
into new gardens.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I find the concepts of doors, portals, and passageways inspiring. One winter day, someone pasted cutouts of three snowflakes on our modest front door. In this poem, I see the three snowflakes as metaphorical for the transience of seasons and the stages of life with all the occasions and celebrations that take place across our thresholds, including death, the sacred passage of life through a new gateway.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Leonhard is a writer, poet, and blogger at Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver.  Her podcast Poetry: The Memoir of the Soul explores universal themes such as Grief, Kindness, and Presence. She taught writing for many years at the University of Missouri, and is the author of Discoveries in Academic Writing. She is also a regular contributor to Free Verse Revolution, Phoebe, MD: Poetry + Medicine, and Go Dog Go Café.