Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Coming Down On The

coming down on the
side of the angels
is not as easy as it looks

in Christmas movies

when Your kingdom on

the tip of our tongue
dissolves like snow

or like something we
walked into a room to retrieve
and then forgot

I reach but I cannot touch

I feel but I cannot say
a splendor flaring up
momentarily-drowned out by idiocy

getting on the wrong bus

I look for you in vain
going past stops I can't recognize

I stand in the rain for hours

finding no Samaritans
either good

or bad-


mary angela douglas 19 february 2008

Monday, October 26, 2009

Diamond Cutters

waiting on the pillar of cloud
I rested on a moss-bright wall
too tired to think of my own name

determined to forget
those who attack without regard
the scarcest jeweled moment left.
oh since they adore

grinding the farthest stars
to gravel, cutting
the last madrigal from the program:

the one of sheerest spring's
petaled music may

their policies rule on no day when
the heartless penny Valentine's revealed
for all that it is not-

and we find
through childish tears
our first real words to say to You:

"We have no Pharoah now."

let the weighted sorrows be weightless then
like butterflies resting on the moon
after aoenic flights consoled.

and You shut down
the leaden skies.
sure of a golden Return-

pouring for us, again,
the crystal remedies of Your stars.
then I won't wonder anymore
I won't say to you, oh God,
"am I far from You, still?
let it not be so."

mary angela douglas 26 october 2009

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

God As The King Of Poetry

Your word is a flame
your word is not a lie
your word is a star
your word is not a lie
your word is not a bent arrow
it is an arrow of gold
I have kept
in my heart's quiver
it is not a lie
there is noise everywhere
it is not the truth
there is the turning back of
every tide you started
it is not the truth
I have stood with the water
rising over my head
I have been told
"You are not drowning"
but I was drowning
And You knew it
I was drowning and you
lifted me out on dry land
You who are not a lie.

mary angela douglas 21 october 2009

Sunday, October 18, 2009

O Crystal Heart Of France

[o Joan of Arc]

[o crystal heart of France

the heart is broken
but it cannot shatter]


your frayed lily banner in my dreams

still shines with its first snow of the
season's individual light

and I imagine you

freed from all strife in Heaven
standing stock still in
the gentian fields


your bright skirts swirling in

planetary breezes,
newly enchanted by the Fairy Tree-


your father's fleecy sheep just

over the green cloud of a hill
and your mother
gives you fresh baked


bread with butter and honey

remembering all the times you
ran away;

blessing the dual sunrise in your eyes.


yet.

no matter how many times
I've sightread your brief song
I cannot turn that page
so hard and bitter it seems to me:


you crowned the King

but doubting who he was

he let you die

a heart they could not burn. *
in my dream the words appeared:

oh crystal heart of France
the heart is broken
and will not shatter

but kings are made of glass-


mary angela douglas 19 october 2009



*it is a matter of historical fact reported by the executioner
that they could not reduce the heart of Joan of Arc to ashes even
though several attempts were made with pitch and sulphur after the fact:It was thrown into the river Seine.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

St. Francis Sowed His Bluebirds

St. Francis sowed his bluebirds
in the Sky
when the lemon wind was never

far away and all these fables
I have held to my heart
as flowers freshly gathered.

now the small doves coo
at Light's own window
and the lavender frescoed

moments all pass by
in every green-graced field
I once believed in-

but I am an hourglass in His hand
I am a bluebird in the Sky
St. Francis,

on the lemon wind-

mary angela douglas 6 october 2009

Monday, October 05, 2009

The Rose-Red Sealing Wax On The Letter's Dry Now

the rose-red sealing wax on the letter's dry now;
the rose red rose white story comes to rest*
like the see-saw on the frozen playground
like the rusted swings still floating in no wind at all.

frost-emulsed are the Christmas windows
and the glorious Holly and the Star
we looked through to see:
the golden bears delivered from their worst selves
on such a cinnamon-sequined day as this.

but I can't tell you the end of the story
or why my cloud-shaped jigsaw piece won't fit
(not even on Christmas morning)

in the thin sky above the little house
swept penny-bright and latched.

I went a long cold way in my scuffed shoes
to fling a milk quartz crackly word into
the moss green pools of
something not remembered but that shone.

don't tell your wishes ever or
they'll not come true
was whispered in my every dream
but I'll tell you the Christmas angels cried:

"Fear Not"-
though years of speaking only underwater
made it hard to see
their real words on the page.


I wished that God would take
the snow-bright word my Mother packed me
(along with her sandwiches of butter and sugar)

into a language angels speak-

mary angela douglas 5 october 2009



*reference to the Grimm's fairytale: "Red Rose White Rose"