All ThingsYou May Expect To Shine

[at Christmastime]

[“Greater love than this, has no man, that he lay down His life for a friend.”

-Jesus]

all the things you may expect to shine

can fall between the cracks of vagrant stars or sidewalks

never glistening at all beside the lost marbles, jacks, and

mercury dimes you know are all still in there.

and you are unornamented

and your branches cannot hold

all this through long ages

for even an instant longer

while they measure you

for a costume in

the Pageant of Nothing,

holding you hostage

to the solstice snowmen on an

elementary stage.

O beknighted Child.

Sing, Noel, though you are banished for it

by the fathers of the long frost, everywhere.

somewhere, something waits and bides all Time, again;

and unexpectedly, the gales begin to turn

on a fragrance from a winter garden

you once thought you learned the music to;

so fugitive, you thought you may have dreamed it all

when you were home sick from school and

stuffed with fairytales and mentholatum in

the drifting counterpanes,

back to life and missed homework

redolent with the outside air 

brought in a little judgmentally

by cheerful, car-coated classmates you barely knew…

and unnamed dread.

but lowly beyond belief, He is:

accrued like a pearl in a sea of darkness

and silent, tear on tear

while small horrors thundered
and their retinues.
and their retinues.

and everything you fought

you have forgotten;  the stick-like words they said

the silly, sicled sighs, the paper wadded landings.

kick through the pebbles they pebbled you with,

debris they wrapped in fancy paper

(before they threw) smiling before the Teacher's face.

it’s only rubble now though yesterday their towers grew

though not by grace.

now that the Light of all lights appears

in your own skies now in God’s own time each tinted year

and pastel bulbed and bright through mist fraught windowpanes

canceling the shadows Forever as many times as you cry out for it

of the puppeteers with their vast holdings

and talent for mimicry that know how to

dig in for the long haul

fox-holed in your gleaming mind or

rabitting at the children’s parties to much applause

to pointless punch and cookies, and cake that crumbles
and breaks off at the end

of the dime store holly rimmed paper plates too paper thin.

while your embarrassment shines through the room
 as though it were candlelabra.

you just want to go home where the real Christmas is.

never mind that in these latter days

the thwarted herods of the work-a-day
 having been brought word of your soul

are trumpeting it all over town  that it’s all over for you, now-

and calling the caterers a little prematurely,b.c.e…

while mysteriously the Sundial gathers force
in a forgotten rose garden in the snow
indicating what can't be predicted
it’s not the end of the world, now, is it?
Grandmother whispered softly

Light, pure light.

Be not dismayed.

mary angela douglas 20 december 2012

Pavane Of The Silver Beads

I will sew silver beads onto the night;

and sing the chanson the princess left behind

when moving from one universe to another

here is the rose thread for the sun when it’s all over;

and the pearl accents for the impossible.

somewhere is stashed the reason to go on

and it just keeps sparkling, though we can’t say why

mary angela douglas 15 december 2012

Pasting The Book Of Hearts By The Paper-doll Stream

“Thou tellest my wanderings; put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in Thy book?”

Psalm 56:8, The Holy Bible

“Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.”

Psalm 84: 3, The Holy Bible

[in memory of my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas]

pasting the book of hearts by the paper-doll stream

I paper-cut the moon and the glitter from antique cards

hoping it would make You appear too soon, my Lord

and the hedges bloom long before spring,

time-lapsed, lilting into a golden light.

It’s the perfect silhouette of a world in Hans

Christian Anderson I still seek or the onion towers’

reckoning In full colour: scarred are the skies the wide world over

for the poet blinded for his imagination.

yet he still sees, spurring the moon bright horses on

for our Lady of the Fleur-di-Lis and the rose gardens:

toward her never collapsing lucidity.

and now, and now again I grieve on the scissoring cello

of the fairytale ellipse like Shoshtakovich-

recording the eclipse at land’s end.

I ‘ll make you apple blossoms pink waxed

on blue crayoned pages

and later, the cherry repetitions of a heart in construction paper 

but now, no longer measuring the cocoa out at Christmastime

the xxxs and the oooos…

whole countries seem to be cut off overnight

from the crystalized candy-cane singing, the Holy Night

she is so far from the land.

and God goes collecting the rosewater tears

of the daughters the daughters the daughters

and the pink dominoes of the childhoods

falling, falling through your 40 year misdiagnosis and

the country you used to come from.

let it all be momentary:

do not weep ma mere

in the courtyard where the artist

condemned to linger

traces on the air allotted him

the roses no one sees and colors them in.

we will archive everything

In poems without number

convinced of an afterlife

pale pink and blue  

where megaphones cannot blare

this cannot be (they mean your soul)

and neighborhoods

turn to pour the stone cold kitchen coffee out

never dreaming you’re right there in a dress of pure magenta.

a smile like Alencon…

one instant ever after…

I’m weeping paper lace in an endless stream

to wrap the flowers for a small bouquet

for the one in a thousand’s thousand

who knew how to read the music this way:

it’s long ago we played in the late afternoon

that the world could not be banished anymore

that someone would recognize our Fate

and that we still hear our mothers calling

from an orchid twilight

all the way from Eden or the State Hospital.

mary angela douglas 30 november, 2, 3 december 2012