by Kath Higgens

I want to tell the world:
we don’t have to sit begging
outside the Beautiful Gate.
Ours it is to enter in.
However crippled we may feel,
the way has been opened.
We can find our voice, we can find
our eyes, we can find our feet.
There is no one who can shut us out
from entering the Holy of Holies.
Won’t you come? The blind, the broken-hearted,
the stutterer, the stumbler.
An innate source and force
wants to propel us over the threshold.
The Beautiful Gate is low, just bow down.
Your own two feet can take you in;
your own bent back will straighten,
your cast-down eyes open to new wonders
all around.

Kath Higgens, originally from the UK, worked for many years in the field of Bible translation in Central Africa, before retiring to South Africa. She has worked as linguist, anthropologist and teacher, and though poetry has long been a passion, she has come late to writing her own.