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The Gate

Marie Howe

I had no idea that the gate I would step through

to finally enter this world

 

would be the space my brother’s body made. He was

a little taller than me: a young man

 

but grown, himself by then,

done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

 

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold

and running water.

 

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.

And I’d say, What?

 

And he’d say, This — holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.

And I’d say What?

 

And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

Marie Howe, “The Gate,” from What the Living Do, Copyright © 1998, W.W. Norton & Company. Reprinted with permission.

About The Author

Marie Howe is a much-awarded poet who traverses metaphysical territory with the sensual simplicity represented by “The Gate” and by drawing on the richness of myth and the gravitas of spiritual literature. In this way, Howe’s poems and essays make themselves accessible  companions to those new to poetry and deep wells for literature buffs and to those becoming seasoned, alongside her generous works, by life and time. 

I encountered Marie Howe’s poem “The Gate” in my early twenties, as I finished my degree in literature and creative writing. I’d been practicing meditation and studying Buddhism for a couple of years already. As a young, healthy person with “my life ahead of me,” I was doing my best to grapple with the truth of impermanence in a way that would really make a difference in my life. (The next year, I took a job as a hospice volunteer coordinator.)

Just a handful of years prior, I’d lost a beloved teacher, who died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm at 43. Her significance in my life was like that of a looming angel. My grief was disenfranchised — the depth and meaning of my loss were largely unknown and incomprehensible even to those closest to me.

As I tried to make sense of the disconnect between the weight of my teacher’s presence in my psyche and her new absence on the physical plane, “The Gate” gently and cleanly penetrated my experiences of confusion and being alone in a dark void. With its plain, supra-rational sense a bit reminiscent of Zen, Howe’s poem helped bring me out of the past with my teacher — a past that blurred into a sometimes heavy and haunted present — and into my own life, into a present that was light and alive with the gifts she’d given me.

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