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Gallery of Charles ~ Poetic Intro

Come in. The door stands open—
not grand, just worn smooth
by all the hands before yours.

This is no museum
where silence is enforced,
but a living house
where poems breathe in their rooms,
rearranging themselves
when no one’s watching.

Some rooms hold darkness—
not empty but expectant,
the quiet before creation.
Others fill with snow,
that particular silence
where listening becomes prayer.
Walk further: you’ll find
philosophy in unexpected places,
wisdom wearing work clothes,
the sacred dressed as ordinary.

Notice how the walls thin
between learning and teaching,
how every room contains both
student and master,
questioner and questioned.
See how some poems strip themselves
clean, removing every flourish
until only essence remains—
moon without metaphor,
sufficient to carry light.

Here, absence has presence.
Letters never sent
still arrive. Silence
speaks in three voices,
sometimes whispering,
sometimes declaring,
always saying more
than words could hold.

The gallery keeps growing—
new rooms appear overnight,
built from moments of attention:
a storm approaching,
a hand loosening at its edges,
the weight of things unsaid.

Each room knows the others,
their doors aligned
so you can see through
one poem into another,
light moving between them
like conversation.

Don’t try to see everything.
Poems, like cats,
reveal themselves
when you stop trying.

Pick any room. Sit. Wait.
The walls remember
everyone who’s entered,
shifting to accommodate
each particular way of seeing.

When you leave—
and you will leave changed—
you’ll carry something:
not souvenirs, but a way
of walking through the world
as if it, too, were a gallery
where every ordinary moment
hangs waiting
to be recognized.