Poem: "The Pear Gate"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the November 2, 2010 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by a prompt from siliconshaman and sponsored by fayanora.  The poem comes from one of my fantasy settings, the Whispering Sands desert, where the Bone Horse is one of the messengers of death.

The Pear Gate

-- a Whispering Sands khazal

There is a door that cannot be seen from this side of life,
rendered invisible by the thick veils of flesh.

Only when the last verse of poetry falls from your dying lips
into the cupped ears of the Bone Horse kneeling by your bed

will the Pear Gate appear before you in all its glory,
arching high overhead to define the threshold between here and there.

The slim silver-gray trunks hold leaves of jade and petals of pearl,
the perfume of the fruit flowing down as heavy as white honey.

Only when you ride on the back of the Bone Horse
can you reach high enough to pluck the Pears of Paradise.

Taste their sweetness and you will forget the bitterness of mortality,
all of life's regrets washed away at last when you swallow.

There is a door that cannot be seen looking over your shoulder at death,
for it belongs to a threshold unremembered in the light of the Bright Beyond.