Are The Lemon Days Piled End to End?

the jam smear in the summer sky was heightened

in the picture here, pleine aire, the right hand corner

sniffed the dealer 

dealing in paintings at the end of the season.

this blue curl in the cloud was famous

in its time

he droned on.

I thought how summers used to be

all made of lemon days piled end to end deliciously

and glimmering so far beyond the still lives here

they buy to buy again.

and was the painter near his end or

just beginning

where new magenta shadows

seem to shine and beckon a someone, somewhere

glancing off the waters of his

long-ago sunset or is it-

mine 

mary angela douglas 31 august 2013

Calendar

[to Sharon]

pulling the taffy sun from a Saturday sky,

did we dream of lemonade springs, the blue bird's wing,

the usual things-

or did we cry?

wasting what was given of the

sprinklering green grass

and raspberry sherbet skies.

oh let us wish, confetti-flecked, for one

lost Christmas back, stowed in the melting attic

at our back and rush

to the side-door entrance

and the kitchen with the appled, appliqued

linen calendar towel:

the chocolate cake just frosted

mary angela douglas 31 august 2013

The Dolls' Boneyard

[a reading from the Book of  "boo"

to be read in various voices in a mildly spooky way...]

you may be haunted and you won’t know why

much farther down the lane

by a little voice that cries: oh not a calico dress again;

I wanted red velvet for Christmas and a silk plaid sash.

and on a corn-husk wind with berry-dyed cheeks something

will sigh and sigh again oh, for a shock of red-orange hair

yarn-looped, and shoe-button eyes… 

and someone speaking porcelain and breaking your stride

will delicately trip you for hiding her under the stairs too long that afternoon, the captive princess, still

when you didn’t finish that play.

so here we are: cornered by the sun-burned

without their sun-bonnets...

and quaking for what the dolls forgot to say

when they were new.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2013

After Jacques Brel

neither earth nor sky, here comes the thief of wishes

to filch the light from children’s eyes from the very sun

that shone on you, Persephone in your dress of wild iris,

neither shore nor sea.

there burns the thief of wishes warning

those who should be told, instead:

oh, flee the Messenger!

or weep fresh centuries away

or shake your Christmas angels,

sleeping fast, awake-

or wait at a turquoise landing

smoothing your dress of pearl till 

not a lemon drop’s left;

a train in the train yard.

she'll murmur from a glassy stream

as one who knew but was not known:

keep stealing the beat from the heart

the right word from the page

while the windmills turn as if in another age but

your own fields

your own...

fields are seldom green.

I saw in a dream with a silver spoon

the thief of wishes scoop the moon

till birdsong flew but not the birds 

I am littered with the jewels of

what remains

mary angela douglas 29 august 2013

I Have Placed My Hand in The Colour Of The Sky

I have placed my hand in the colour of the sky.

I have placed my feet where only God could know

that I wept flowers; that I bled snow;

that I could not turn to go

from the keyless door,

from the rented porch of stars.

mary angela douglas 28 august 2013

God Keep The Heartbreak, Heartfelt

[for Julie Harris] 

God keep the heartlbreak, heartfelt

keening of the wind lifting the grey skies

without you, now; the ospreys

in the interim...the waif-like prosceniums.

the footlights of Heaven dim

before you'll open your wondering eyes

that wondrously-

again

mary angela douglas 27 august 2013

again

How Fully Do The Empty Trees

how fully do the empty trees

embrace the air

holding their tristeza like an only child.

the path seems wrought in golden whiles

until the gusts remove with no one left to ask

the shorn leaves lying there.

so much lies between the lines

not wrought in gold, but questioning

the questioners who have never grown tired

of pegging you.

and this is winter,

the worst of it.

Jesus is not a franchise I cry to the glistening

and kneel in my novembers

up to my neck in vanishing

mary angela douglas 27 august 2013

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED EXCEPT JULIE HARRIS...

August 26, 2013


Dear Reader,

This small space is dedicated with reverence and gratitude to the memory of the Americn actress, Julie Harris who passed away on Saturday at the age of 87.  By all accounts one of the truly great artists of the United States and rare in her tempered yet searing emotional interpretation of roles.

Sadly, on NPR this weekend and today I listened in vain for any kind of tribute.  Just now I entered the search terms "Julie Harris" and "All Programs" (on NPR).

Absolutely nothing came up.

Perhaps all things are not being considered.  If you want to consider her, please find if you can the beautiful film (on DVD, perhaps also, VHS) entitled "The Belle of Amherst" in which she seemed to me not only to invoke the spirit of the poet Emily Dickinson but for the duration of the performance and afterwards in the performance recollected, to incarnate her.

God Bless You, Julie Harris for the love you demonstrated through your art.  I do and will always consider this and I know I am not the only one.

mary angela douglas august 26, 2013

Our Ship Going Nowhere In A Still Harbour

our ship going nowhere in a still harbour

dreams of drifting and in drifting, dreams

but you will say this is not enough;

you will disturb the mirrored swans' perfection

only with your sigh and a turning away.

and turning away is like drifting

but turning away is not my dream.

our ship going nowhere in a still harbour

is resplendent, I say in the echoing air

in the crystal air that knows

all drifting has an end.

or a beginning

somewhere, my madrigal,

fallen into the Deep

mary angela douglas 25 august 2013

Particoloured Tears Are Falling Through The Evening Blind

August 22, 2013

Dear Reader,

In honor of what would have been Ray Bradbury's 93rd birthday here is a poem reposted for you that I wrote a few days after he passed away last year.
In which fragments of possible stories he might have written in my imagination came and went like fragments of a dream dissolving...

And, with admiration note the exquisite animation by Google on the 151st birthday of Claude Debussy which of course you can see for yourself.  How kind of God to send them both...

-----------------------------------------------------

[small prelude on the pianoforte, for Ray Bradbury, gone:

August 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012]

oh all the rainbows have fallen into the earth, headfirst-

and “snow without Christmas” as he cried

has stunned his sometimed midnight’s

sunned chorales.

but – even now-

when the first curled handbell of grief is chimed, at times, magnolia creamery of the long before,

you’re still in business

on the ivory keys of snowconed pages turning

in the lock

or filtering round pure

apricot sparkles down

oh God knows how-

my shuttered April mind.

it’s wondering I dream to find

no new poet laureate of the homesick, but

distraught cloud horses whinnying on their own in

folds of cerulean, coral, forestalled-

with storied apples offered: oh wrought of a banished gold-

(as they are now)-

to keep them home.

the day wears on…we won’t know clearly now

when dark ferrised earth kept turning into...

blossom ladened trees renew their snow and

petal the sweetheart mourning: “morning

minstrelsy is dead” throughout the vacant orchards but is she

pale pink surprised into carmine-

by valentines received

in the afternoon mail

from one thought dead…?

while we as we behold through a looking glass pinhole in the constellations:

his ice-cream coloured trollies

hauling back and forth

new circuses of sighs and working prisms-

(“dewdrop, listen”…he whispered so we wouldn’t forget you ever-

or children would justlet go and all at the same time

their last balloons losing everything then

it felt that way, to them…)

It’s got to be now on Opal Rails

somewhere else, going on…

couch this in bluebirds and hydrangeas…

and cool cups of lilied moonlight on the grass

of other planets looking just like home

held higher above our heads than these dreams

have ever been before: long

past the vast pinwheeled parades of the strolling musicians, musicless

on earth,

but not where motley is torn-

its falling its falling through the evening blind

and near

our particoloured tears, unending…

for the something unsurpassed

and all, all-in-all at last…

caught by a weeping God in a ruby red bottle-

the best firefly of the whole Summer…

mary angela douglas 14 june 2012 1:49 p.m.

Screen reader users, click here to turn off Google Inst+You

Out Here On A Limb For You

[to Eugene Field, again]

out here on a limb for You,

the gold and scarlet fruit

cascades to the ground

in fairytale shimmering surplus

is it nowhere to be found

when babies crawl to the keyhole

bawling, this was yesterday-

bereft of the sugar-cakes with the tiny pink roses,

inconsolably...?

don't cry, don't

granules of the sun shine down so lemonly upon you;

do not stray from the woodland paths to pick the bright 

flowers, though I know you'll want to:

in your red velvet, velvetly caped

and the becoming (hand-stitched) hood-

embroidered with pale roses.

and in the basket, depending which version you read,

is a mound of butter that somehow never melts 

ineffably fine white rolls and ligonberry jam

and it's midsummer midsummer midsummer

in a far off land

where children are not vocationally steered or

sorted out for the space programs, or manufactured for

the pianofortes-

but where they colour wildly so that the rainbows

weep profusely

mary angela douglas 21 august 2013

  

The Painter At Sunset Unable To Capture it All

pale green majolica peach bright sky-

mezzo magenta marbelized (sigh)

tangerine- ultramarine- shell rose,

goodbye

mary angela douglas 19 august 2013

And So The Fairy Wish, Wound, Will Come To Pass

and so the fairy wish,- wound - will come to pass

on a Saturday perhaps a little gloomy when she

grows weary turning the royal kaleidoscope this

ruby way or that and wanders off in a gown of pink

trimmed slightly blue to match her mood and silkenly

she'll yearn to know what's in the golden attic.

there the spindle shone and then, the swoon and then

the failing of an ancient afternoon foretold;

the roses can't grow old but the thorns thicken

and the years appall not those who won't be

heard to say though lovelier than the day

these manifold sorrows won't be laid to rest

by the mere dreaming of a princess...

mary angela douglas 17 august 2013

There Is Another Kingdom Where The Brambled Roses Breathe

there is another kingdom where the brambled roses breathe

where fragrance from colour cannot be parted.

winding the clock of quiet come the snows

hallowing.

there is another kingdom where the home you left

on fire, distressed, packing no clothes at the onrush of

the midnight wing, packing the

floods instead is set down in a vale

beset with lilacs, light and far far

removed from the killing shore. you know.

you know

where the soul from the soul

cannot be parted more.

mary angela douglas 16 august 2013

Are You Disappearing Still

the fractiled populations glow only for an instant

on the holy grid  and are you disappearing still?

are you factored into the sun

and subject to random evaluations.

on the spur of the whimsical?

are you fired at will,

called special at the end of the day

lumped in with the myriad suffering others

while your devastated countries bleed

and all your imaginary companions

under the nose of the monitors monitoring

do you know what to  feel

what to wear on these occasions?

fact finding committees would

haul you away as though you were trash

right in front of the essential employees

while the poets in the newsrooms blanch

given more than  .50 of a tinker’s damning chance.

Shine!  momentary diamond in the mind of God

eternal, cherished

Individual-

even this far from home

mary angela douglas 15 august 2013

Rainer Maria, It's the Rim Of Light

only the stars in a blue-white extremity

signal to you: can you be that far?

when the wanderer's path is

a ribbon of sea-

a canyon of standing still.

only the stars in a blue-white extremity

translate the evenings to the wind

enabling you to breathe

all this is as if

 reading Rilke in a dream,

surmises through the

dim boughs of your sleep

the crystal extremity of birdsong

long ago longed-for,

etched in the glass

or was it, the snows

not yet, foreclosed on

mary angela douglas 10 august 2013

To Be Hidden Under A Stone For The Next One Who Needs It

my they start so small murmured the princess silkenly

almost leaning into the grate where the baby dragons slept and slept and shone

oh who would think that when they’ve grown

rumbling armoured in chartreuse, complete-

down to their perfect fuchsia toenails

that they would thrive

splitting the villagers needlessly. endlessly...

if you have a heart, keep it.

if you have a dream, be still within it..

if you have a shadow sew it to the stars

and lose your name.

mary angela douglas 7 august 2013

Blue Is The Bluest Joy

one blue crayon for the rain

for the grape stain on a pale tablecoth

one blue crayon-

only one-

for the sapphire midnight sun

for the belated wish for the

plum-deep chiaroscuro the unseen span

over the water lilies

I may keep

holding on to one blue crayon

to a house in a twilight town

to the stub of no renown

joyously blue

mary angela douglas 6 august 2013

Alice In A Blue Gown Wondering

shall I follow the burbling stream thought

Alice to herself in a dream within a dream

this was in the Pre-Rabbit days

or just let it burble on

oh really is there any other way to burble

than to yourself she wondered as if for

the first time in a lifetime of wondering

that was merely just starting to be self-evident

is there any other way apart from dreams to part-

but muddled are the colours when I find them

(if I find them) in the galleries of sleep

and am I invited I am not to the first showings

shall I follow the burbling stream each time it

burbles or only on Mondays only in a green glade

God forgot to color in or left for me invitingly to find

so I’ll just fill in the outlined spaces

for Him, Shall I?

with a soft periwinkle.

mary angela douglas 5 august 2013;30 november 2020

Just Desserts For The Literary Fray

poetry is its own award perhaps

said a little girl somewhere eyeing

the slice with the cabbage rose on it

I’ll take that one,please pink meltingly

its always its birthday

it doesn’t have to beg for ice cream

it just dreams it up and pouf! raspberry frappe

lime lemon gelato gelato

its always got butterscotch in its pockets

peach cobbler lunch-boxed any odd time of day

it owns the moon and the stars

what else could it want from you,

banana cream pie?

mary angela douglas 5 august 2013

Bygone

[to John Keats and those who came later

quoting the rose they

stumbled through the thickets

thick with the mists of faerie

who will say how their stories

ended in the sere days in the

days without mercy

quoting the rose they

rose to stand, to walk, to fly

through thickets of waking buds,

innumerable suns and on the cusp

of learning learning

everything by heart

Again

mary angela douglas 3 august 2013

Everything Chimes, Not Only The Wind-Chimes Starbright, Aeolian

everything chimes, not only the wind-chimes, starbright, aeolian

in the wind tree branches chime and winterly

clacking branches branching  ice chimes coating them

and afterwards you are chiming too whenever you are

walking through the shattering pieces chiming and

chiming are you

marveling after the ice storm that the trees are shaken

and the ice is shaken from them even in brokenness on the

winter ground

declining not to chime

mary angela douglas 3 august 2013