[in memory of my grandparents, Lucy and Milton B. Young]
watching your bright ship sail away
I cried
and diamond on diamond was the
wake of the waters behind you even as music ever was:
washed in starlight, surely and the
competing flutes of small, cherished birds
fluttering near the rose brick house
with the picture windows.
I won't wake again
to any more glittering sight
or sadness
than watching your bright ship slipping
from me-
bending my lyre into the ground
where the oak leaves whirl up
under the last Arkansas sky
before Heaven's light breaking.
mary angela douglas 26 september 2010
Deuteronomy 31:12-14, KJV
It is not in heaven, that thou shouldst say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto to us, that we may hear it and do it?
Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldst say, who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it?
But the word is very nigh unto thee,
in thy mouth and in thy heart...
