Vox Populi
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Luray Gross: Small Fists Knocking
If poems “are very small fists
knocking on a very thick door,”
as my friend Baron once described them,
are they really worth writing?
Do those tiny taps mean
anything? Can the urgency
with which they are delivered
be felt by anyone less sensitive
than that storied princess bothered
by a single pea?
Is a poem a teaspoon of salt in the ocean,
one grain of sand placed carefully
on a turret of the castle
just before the wave rushes in?
Or are they, perhaps, spider silk,
capable of reaching across airy spaces
and surviving the night-wind’s fury?
Do they have the tensile quality of
steel, able to bend, to nearly breathe, to
be of use in the machinery of our living?
I do not know if a poem is dust or mahogany,
granite or silt, a speck in the eye
or a rifle blast.
Perhaps a poem is no more than a faint exhale
or a fleeting premonition,
perhaps a hair root that shrivels in dry soil
only hours before the drought-breaking rain.
Perhaps as catching as a pandemic viral agent
or a fit of the giggles.
I do not know how long one must knock
on the heavy door for it to open
or to shatter. Without knowing,
I keep on knocking.
October 13, 2025
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Luray Gross
Luray Gross grew up on a Pennsylvania dairy farm in a household full of music and books. She is the author of five collections of poetry, Forenoon, Elegant Reprieve, The Perfection of Zeros, Lift and With this Body. She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County and resident faculty at the 2006 Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry in Franconia, NH.
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I keep knocking too, no matter what ❤️
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The verses are beautifully constructed, and so are the metaphors, such as the following verses,
If poems “are very small fists
knocking on a very thick door,”
as my friend Baron once described them,
I do not know how long one must knock
on the heavy door for it to open
or to shatter. Without knowing,
I keep on knocking.
Or are they, perhaps, spider silk,
capable of reaching across airy spaces
and surviving the night-wind’s fury?
Do they have the tensile quality of
steel, able to bend, to nearly breathe, to
be of use in the machinery of our living?
I have encountered conversations by poets who discuss “what is poetry? ” Shouldn’t they know? It seems that as poets and messengers, they only know in part, but they have a strong sense of the multilayered meaning of an experience. It reminds me of 1Corinthians 13…”For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; Now I know in part; then I shall know fully…” Throughout the ages as did the Apostle Paul/Saul of Tarsus encountered this notion. This poem reminds me of Joseph Campbell’s discussion on the function of poetry. He suggests that studying poetry is a way for ordinary people to begin to come to go beyond the limitations of ordinary meaning the transcendent. It is meant to receive a message of a deeper truth.
Joseph Campbell says:
“Poetry is a language that has to be penetrated, it doesn’t shut you off, it opens, it’s the rhythm, the precise choice of words that will have implications and suggestions that go past the word, is what has to happen. And then you get what [James] Joyce calls the radiance, the epiphany. The epiphany is the showing through of the essence, what Aquinas called the quidditas, the whatness. The whatness is the Brahman.”
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Fascinating, Luz. Thank you.
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Beside Luray’s knocking, Baron Wormser has much to say about poetry and its ways to influence readers, especially in his essay “After Poetry Month.”
One quote among numerous luminous (to make a rhyme) ones of his:
“In meeting a poem there is no “answer” of the sort that schools and tests are fond of. Instead, there is much to discuss, feel, and meditate upon, since some residue of the indefinable, an admixture of light and dark, adheres to any poem that seeks to go beyond anecdote, particularly if the poet seeks, as Dickinson did, to honor the fullness of time– all those moments among countless creatures, to say nothing of flowers and trees and mountains, all that lost personal and impersonal history. The mind reels. Poetry seeks to somehow corral that reeling”.
One other point of his: that for some would-be readers, engaging with a poem creates a sense of their vulnerability, (and our narcissistic culture discourages that).
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Perfect. Thank you, Jim.
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“perhaps a hair root that shrivels in dry soil
only hours before the drought-breaking rain.” Thank you.
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This is the first poem I’ve read in a while that actually affected me; we all, whether a dabbler or “Professional Poet,” have asked ourselves this question many times, I’m sure. For me, a poem can be a “faint exhale” and that is enough! Thanks for the poem.
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Thanks, Leo!
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An excellent poem, with many gems, and that BIG question I have asked myself many times. This is the key: “I do not know how long one must knock / on the heavy door for it to open / or to shatter. Without knowing, / I keep on knocking.”
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Thank you, Rose Mary!
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Once I began to read this poem I was forced to dig-in for a very careful read. Luray covers the bases here, for instance…from spider silk to machinery of our living? And it all works! I’m printing it now and will keep it on my desk for inspiration… and to read over and over for fun!
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Thanks, HC. I agree, Luray is a remarkable poet.
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From “Are they really worth writing?” to “I keep knocking”
Everyday, knocking on God’s door. As Rumi also writes, the door was never closed. Thank you for this poem, Luray.
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Thank you, Moudi!
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Thank you, Luray! And it’s good to see our recently departed friend Baron making an appearance. It makes me think we should all compile a compendium of his remarks about poetry. (Another was “Poetry is life in the slow lane.”) I hadn’t heard this one. And look where it led you!
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What a good poem this is. What fabulous questions you ask. What perfect, possible answers you offer. Oh do, do — please — keep knocking!
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Lovely poem, Luray!
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Lovely poem, Luray!
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