Requiem

[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...