By Frederick Smock 
   There was a gate,   old and green,   that swung in the wind.   No fence stretched away   on either side anymore,   if ever one had.   The gate stood alone,   open on the meadow,   a seamless drift of land.   To my eye, that gate   organized the whole field   of vision. Everything   circled around the gate,   or radiated out from it,   or passed through it.   Surely I could never think   of crossing that field   and not passing through.   There was an inevitability   to it, and a promise that,   after passing through,   something remarkable   was sure to be revealed   on the other side.    Poet and essayist Frederick Smock, professor of English and director of Creative Writing at Bellarmine University and a former Kentucky Poet Laureate, died on July 17, 2022. Click here to read a remembrance.