There are these doors
of generations.  Some doors
are thin bridges, as Rabbi
Nachman said, plaintive
calls not to be afraid.
Some doors may change
the key we sing in.
Others are written, but we
can still argue with them.
Some doors are gold.
Some are wind and grass,
swept from nowhere
except where they began
in a beggar’s hand.

Richard Widerkehr won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan and received his M.A. from Columbia University, which he attended on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.  Two book-length collections of his poems were published in 2011:  “The Way Home” (Plain View Press) and “Her Story of Fire” (Egress Studio Press).  Tarragon Books published his novel, “Sedimental Journey,” about a geologist.  Recent work has appeared in “Rattle,” “Floating Bridge Review,” “Poetry Super Highway,” and is forthcoming in “Nomad’s Choir,” “Grey Sparrow,” and “Clay Bird Review.”  He received his adult Bar Mitzvah in 2012.