Losing The Rain On The Roof

losing the rain on the roof we dream in cinder-blocks

of a roof made of stars and infinity

green trees willowy in a large meadow

large ballrooms where the soul can dance

and not be found out

losing the rain on the roof I cried

I tried to find the way back.

I miss the sound of it more than music

more than music

without the words

mary angela douglas 30 january 2014

A TRIBUTE TO PETE SEEGER. GOODBYE, DEAR RIVER SINGER.

It seems like he was always there in the background somehow, one of those American fixtures that seem
so familiar, so comfortable like a worn out shoe, but in his case like a worn out shoe that mystically, never wears out. Like a fairytale, folktale kind of person but- a person that is really like that, not by design, but just by breathing in and out, like water flowing is just water.  A stone rolling down a hill is a stone rolling.  A tree in the wind is a tree in the wind. No subterfuge.  No posing.

And when you heard him, and I did, throughout my childhood here and there on tv, and later, in
documentaries and finally, in Washington D.C. in 1983 at a human rights rally on the Mall, you had a feeling just like that.  Like you were in a story he was singing, you were part of the story he was singing and you were happy to be and comforted like a child hearing the story, being the story and always, at his invitation, singing along.

In a country half-mad with rebranding itself every other minute it is refreshing to remember how he was
with his banjo just walking up and commencing to play.  No fanfare.  No preliminaries.  Just like the
clouds drift and you watch them and you feel better.

Pete Seeger didn't have to rebrand himself.  What he was was good enough.  An American in his own way, a singer in his own rhythms.  Steadfast.  A lovely tune you couldn't get out of your head, but then, why would you want to.  The news article I read online said he didn't like
the term folk singer.  Call me a river singer he said.  He flowed like a river indeed, unobtrusively, but needed in the landscape.

How we will miss him.

mary angela douglas 28 january 2014

P.S. The article that referenced Pete Seeger's preference for being called a river singer is by
Bob Minzesheimer of USA Today.

The Broken Chinaware Of The Exceeding Dream

[after seeing the mosaics, and mixed-media of Priscilla Williams, January 27, 2014, Forsyth  County Central Library, Winston-Salem, North Carolina]

the broken chinaware of the exceeding dream

sets face up in the mire of gold unseen but felt.

it's raining permanent tulips

roses down the sky

on the lady in green beneath delft Blue 

I wonder why we didn't see her before

where the clouds don't move nor does the 

sun; it's almost heaven rose-tipped in a frame

that cannot break again and newlywed

when ladies with amethyst wings just sprouting

half-dance against the blue and white tile

to qualify as shy, happy angels in training

Here springtime does not lie

because it cannot change what it is.

chipped sapphire,

it's all coming back to you when

she holds time in her careful hands:

making something beautiful

out of the shattered, piecemeal,

musical as Sundays

mary angela douglas 27 january 2014

Rose Pink Flamingo Flurries Over Africa

[on Nikolai Gumilev, a brief cadenza-]

Rose pink flamingo flurries over Africa

he might have seen, if he had lived

a son grown taller, deeper, not displaced-

still not following Anna anyway perhaps

at times repeating what he said before

oh, you should take up the ballet

returning later to find fresh fairytale scraps

bound up in no ribbons, scattered on the floor

and changeling, the tawny glints in cloisonne

jeweled combs that weren't there before o

trist bisque doll with the books all sold

and very little left; in a ragged shawl she might

have been, still adorned with red roses fading into

old silk but

she's no longer home, the one he left in worn down

slippers floated  a queen slightly foreign to him

a girl who wept flowers and stars

at the least provocation.

singing.

Africa, he sighed and was off again.

how would her verse have altered-

if he had lived- with so much absence,

so much more, filling up with snows

and Mandelstam, the same-

still haunted, haunting the pavements where

they used to roam watching the Neva in the cold

fill up with raspberry lights, little clouds and poems

commemorating in advance

the later lamentations

unaccountable joy

mary angela douglas 26 January 2014

My Faberge Egg Is Hatching Little Stars

my faberge egg is hatching little stars,

cut crystal-

whole cherry orchards unrazed

of a creamy pink that's inscribed

with thoughts on raspberry wings

in fine detail

etched

somnolent summer, grain gold

lime-leafed avenues and in the distance

ruby trains tunneling through the

mountains to the village where it's

always snowing but everyone's used to it

a fine diamond  snow.

so no one starves and is always singing

my little village, pearl encrusted;

pale green emerald of my birches-

live!

mary angela douglas 26 January 2014

When You Are Finished With The Colouring Books

[to Eugene Field for his lovely, long-ago poem "The Sugar Plum Tree" and a world-wide plea for a return to former inclusiveness (where the culture of mankind is concerned)]

when you are finished with the colouring books

it will be time to inherit everything of beauty,

worth. even calico hand-me-downs

and every nightingale perched in the

pale green anthology in my Grandmother's

living room bookcase in pale gilt letters

spelled out on the spine: "World Poetry" I never

learned to keep it separate all those colours

bleeding into each other in the margins of

my mind sitting in my Grandfather's chair

turning the myriad pages of what  was called

in school, then, the universal canon of

mankind

why are we going backwards colouring in

the lines of our designated tribes alone-

even if, in bright colours and

with the thickest crayons...

when will you find again in quietness

tracing the rainbow's declensions:  all jeweled

iterance tolls for  thee for thee

and crystal clear.

in every epoch peach bright speech streams a

destined loveliness my friends in the mystical orchard

and more besides, look up and see

beyond the dusted off refurbished opalescence strung

in your particular evening sky and neighborhood

the candied stripings of infinitude rustle in leaves in

your own mind these

letters from the long ago in diamond spidery handwriting

laden and windfall falling from the sugarplum trees

for thee, for thee and thine;

you live in that realm

if you want to...

mary angela douglas 26 January 2014

Why Should You Say Simply What You Can Spell Out In Stars

why should you say simply

what you can spell out in stars

in time lapsed roses in a

magic garden surprise oh

surprise at the birthday

wishes, wishes for (don't say it) realized

but through an unforeseen door

a window left ajar

and there are Peter Pan and

the others trailing their

sparkles behind them for

us to garner still

for garnet on garnet's

scattered in the skies

if you can find the right

word for it otherwise

it's just plain purple

not even purpereal

good enough for some

and never damson, plum

or white violets sighed the

princess finding them first

in the April woods before

her companions

everyone knows who knows this

that the birds keep flinging roseate roseate roseate

into the aurora, not the sunrise.

oh burst upon us silverly, lost demanding music

rose on vivid rose new crown-ed damask:

we are half-sick of prose

mary angela douglas 26 January 2014

Victoriana

is this the map made out of mist

the one the children lost

on their way to the blue mountains?

here is the spot where they ate their

last peppermints, butterscotch, lemon drop

and the bright foil wrappers glinting in the sun

an SOS

to someone small

to anyone at all

there's the place they found fresh water

and washed their faces in dim

starlight hardly lighting the path

to the Other side

and here's the arbor where

they told each other stories

waiting for help to come-

there, the shadow of famine, war

of small things left undone

of the illumination of sudden fevers

of ribbons untied on presents

imagined by their mothers

silver wishes foundered golden ones

spiced gumdrops

here's the cache of rubies they left behind

and in the phantom snow, bird tracks of

sparrows bringing them bright berries bright berries

in their beaks and songs

and here the trail disappears

where the guardian angels loom with peach bright wings

tinged with violet leaning over the children

in the rickety  rowboat...

the still waters

where the angels bore them away

as in fine prints that hung on

the rose paper walls papered over with sighs

of the Great Houses

long, o long ago

mary angela douglas 24 January 2014

Returning To The Tower We Sought To Win

[to Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, and Alfred Lord Tennyson-

and all the others before and after...in every country and language]

"The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full..."

-Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

returning to the tower we sought to win

gaily your pennants floating on the wind;

the mind renewed

where vintage valentines were stored

since no one needed anymore

the hearts of those who thought before

long golden thoughts

in an ivory scene derailed-

for what?

returning to the tower we sought to breathe

above the innocence of trees, beyond the snowed in Park  still

newly green as we were when we first loved

them.

whatever stole them and our time

we will forget and learn to rhyme again

under the inconstant moon

or in blank verse lose this wilderness

and swear new constancy to Him:

Christ of all poetry; they knew-

without flinching at the name.

.

returning to the tower

let there be balm in picture books again

and evensong and starlight unadulterated.

the poets now in shadow once wrote in this sun

and they were true.

we will remember you, your light

the sudden sorrow of your flights

the useless defamation down the years.

the colours of your songs will paint

this modern quest

for Beauty wronged

and we will sing;

unashamed and free, though ridiculed

and jewel on jewel the peerless cantos learn, prolong

so meant for earth as Heaven indeed down to the last breath

and margins of the sea of song 

of faith of hearts

no longer empty

mary angela douglas 23 january 2014

It's The Raspberry Ripple Through The Ice-Creamed Stories

it's the raspberry ripple through the ice-creamed stories

tower on pasteled tower (and with whipped cream)

that half keeps me alive 

it's the picture book surprise

of a world still unfolding;

of imagination in living colours

inside, still spreading its fans, gold sequined

rainbow sunrise sherbeted.

spumoni triple play oops! Neapolitan I

meant to say while

rabbiting through the Easter grass

in the dead of winter

slipping past the deadlines.

my taffeta pockets cramfull of salted nuts

and wedding mints after the receptions

to supplement my larder.

God knows I need to.

but I'm at work and not supposed to do this 

while I'm keying things in.

how would they write me up?

let's think about this some more.

maybe they'll say:

your daydreams are off the [flow] chart

[and it's starting to flow like lava now

toward my tiny happy hut in the path of it,

multicoloured!]

too retro to be believed or annotated

ever in the thirty-ringed employee handbook

you should have memorized by now

or in the Moses brought them down from the mountain

unwritten rules we'll never tell you unless it's too late

and anyway, we just made them up on the spot for you

you you, you anamolie (of course, they can't spell it

that's what they hired me for)

because anyone with a professional demeanor

and half a spitsworth of leadership skill-sets

and diva-tasking

has got to know better than this.

you're letting us all down.

ALL?

(clomp. clomp. here they come; this is it)

Miss Douglas, you're on probation for wishing again

-30-

mary angela douglas 22 january 2014

Under A Pink And Blue Sky

under a pink and blue sky

babies in their cribs awake and cry

longing to be dressed in pink and blue

immediately; the

older children on their way to school

miles from the Fair grow wistful

for cotton candy, wax-paper packed in a lunchbox

by the gherkins and the fruit salad, crammed in

near the meatloaf sandwich on an onion roll:

pure tasty pink and blue spun out of nothing

although they know
it isn't summer anymore.

the baker in the town square

halts amid the jonquil icing batches

unprepared for the flood of calls

for pink and blue frosted cakes

stacked end to end and will they

reach the moon or 

the Princess counting her gowns in a half-baked dream

who throws the whole lot out starting over

in pink and blue chintz that's satinly ordered up

on the pink princess phone this

very sheer pink and blue minute: veiled illusion, tulle-

bring swatches of pasteled chalks as seen from space;

the astronauts gaze befuddled from the capsule at

an earth redecorated pink and blue and ask themselves

will the sea rise soon in 50 metre waves or more

dousing the aurora

in ribbons of pink and blue moire?

not daring to ask Houston.

and will you remember suddenly struck

by candy coloured lightning through and through

everything you thought you knew

for the final examination

oh! but you'd forgotten

pink and blue
you realized later
thinking things through
making do with an A-

mary angela douglas 22 january 2014

A Letter Arrives In The Kingdom Of Nasturtiums

Dear Mama,
I wish I could have written this before:

let's go to the Kingdom of Nasturtiums

where it's always pure orange, pure violet.

and a pink so tinged with blue it makes you

want to cry it is so beautiful

exactly as it appears on the Burpee seed packets in the kitchen drawer,

dear Mama.

we will have no rent.

and feast on strawberries and cream just

like English nursery rhymes.

and I'll have lemon curd for tea or lime

which do you prefer?

there will be no institutions there

no watchdogs of your fragile mind

masquerading as friends

who complain that they're too footsore now

from being out all day to fetch the less than glitzy Christmas decorations for the steel grey decor they keep you in.

your soul like an orchid shone..

in Heaven I expect it to be different.

no spindle pricks at all

no kingdom of sleep brave, brave princess

awake, awake in the Kingdom of Nasturtiums

God is the flower gardener and

there are no walls

mary angela douglas 20 january 2014

Over The Velvet Rooftops Of The Night

over the velvet rooftops of the night

I sailed my cloudy ship

into hidden moonlight

where are you I cried

at the window of my soul

frosted, as if for Christmas

candelight is down

the withered wreaths are gathered by the proud

while the tree in the attic tells stories

to the mice that forget their cheese for the moment...

little fir tree, I still love you

Hans Christian Anderson

over the velvet rooftops of the night

did we paper airplane sail your stories

over the griefs, over the griefs

of the sullen earth,

forever?

mary angela douglas 19 january 2014

Newswires Slowly Gathered/ Not Everyone Loved The Sixties And Their Aftermath Part 1

in a world of causes why should the soul

be caught in the brambles

like a superfluous guest trapped at the party?

what do you want with the soul?

I asked the malefactors trespassing

once again in the moonlight: 

can the soul protest?

is there a pennant gold enough to wave

for injuries against the Soul?

these things take their toll.

oh, miss the parades that waste your time.

believe in what you are and study harder while

clinging to the tower going under; it only seems to be.

let those who seem and cannot be take charge of the ripples 

widening in the Pond;and pitch their tents in the pitch black 

nothingness of world wide fame, applause.

and celebrate celebrity.

God and the Soul are one without them,

certainly.

mary angela douglas 19 january 2014;20 nov. 2014

Child Near The Half Glazed Pond In Early April

anchor your stained-glass shadows in the grass

it's irised still, your Easter;

your heart is full of flowers.

the chill of the pale greens gathers fast

in the woods and on the playgrounds

at recess;

recessed in the stone,

the Madonna hints at birthdays

white tissued, tied in blue bows even in

snows that interrupt your aprils.

hold fast the page that they would turn for you

and anchor your stained glass shadows in the grass-

the grass that blows when the

winds of His presence, pass.

you are the spring's cathedral

beautiful, wavering, there

in His best looking glass-

mary angela douglas 19 january 2014

Drinking Our Milk Up Under The Milky Way

drinking our milk up under the Milky Way

(that's above a violet rooftop)

we know the cartoons wait for us;

it's Saturday (after chores done hastily)

and the curly black dog waits under

the table for the coffee cake crumbs to fall.

sometimes it's buttermilk sipped slowly

marigold or

are the stars then butter coloured

we could think while munching our wonder bread

sweet butter spread

looking back we wonder why

they called it bread

but twinkies twinkled after school

inside there's a world of creme

frosting though it's not your

birthday

why can't the moonlight stay

the way that it was then

so dairy fresh so silver lined

inside the blue lines of

our writing tablets

after school just one week

before Christmas

mary angela douglas 19 january 2014

Red Velveteen Wouldn't The Rosebuds Wish To Be

red velveteen wouldn't the rosebuds wish to be

thought the little girl colouring endlessly

in the afternoon while her mama

listened from the kitchen.

red velveteen.

it feels the same

indoor as out

she sang brightly of bright petals

all afternoon

red velveteen

why wouldn't Cinderella

choose that very shade

I would if I were her she sang

and wouldn't you sing

on a rainy, rainy afternoon

red velveteen

red velveteen

with a scattering of tiny pearls

if you were her?

mary angela douglas 19 january 2014

It Snowed In My Dream The Princess Said

it snowed in my dream the princess said

to no one at breakfast

in a boysenberry light

and buttered her bread.

the courtyard filled with crystal on crystal

soundlessly.

a pause in music, you know and

not a rest

dressed in pure silver

fleece downwind of certain stars

and I in a blue spring shawl

a rose trimmed skirt

in a landscape of parfait colours

began to say

to no one at all it's winter here

but it isn't cold at all

sing it from the high sweet towers

mary angela douglas 19 january 2014

Nocturne Again In The Small Sleep Of The World

talking in the sleep of the world the small leaves sigh

sigh down corridors of moonlight

year on year

all things fade into their beginning

the painting's on the wind

it chimes

down corridors of moonlight

in the sleep of the world

the artist wakes all colours fade

into their beginning

the small leaves sigh

do the stars listen

glistening every time 

a small child sighs

how many weeks till

the Christmas of the world,

returns?

and will You find me

everywhere

the small leaves sigh

down corridors of dream

dream, in the fading of the world

mary angela douglas 19 january 2014

They Would Not Send The Angels To Help Us

they would not send the angels to help us

through a sea of tears and the door is locked 

on alice into the garden floats the little key

lost, lost without her

they would not send the angels to help us

or stay the executions even one more day.

one more day on your bright earth the

one you intended the one you gift-wrapped for us with

starlight brighter than tinsel tenderly

with your little leaves just coming out on

the vines of our houses 

they burned it all down who would not send the

angels to help us

tho chained the angels each to each

and mocked their brilliance.

but you put the rainbow in their wings

in their wings that flew over the seas of ink

the poets died for

dying to say we loved your light Jehovah

they would not send the angels to help us

so You came yourself

mary angela douglas 14 january 2014

God Grant To The Countries In The Fine Mists Of Your Eden

God grant to the countries in the fine mists of your  Eden

a returning way through the fairytale woods

even as music is barely heard at first

when the children open their eyes

in an unfamiliar room.

and if the skies above my page are snowless still-

missing Christmas and the evergreen-

let flowers be gathered by imaginary springs

where the waters flow over the bruised soul.

it's deep in our winter caves that I keep sweeping up

the broken nebulae around your hallowed head

or pressed against the windows of Your far kingdoms

I'm just keeping still.

awaiting starlight and the rose corolla

as it was in our beginning

mary angela douglas 14 january 2014

Fantasie Impromptu On Her Last Letter To Lytton

FANTASIE IMPROMPTU ON HER LAST LETTER TO LYTTON

[for Virginia Woolf]

I am no longer I she cried

in the pier glass of waters far from home

closer in time is farther back much earlier she sighed

to the larkspur shadows in the room

that held her like a necessary angel

in his gaze or repartee

glancing up from his reading perhaps

a little quizzical thinking

why is it every time she enters the room

like a particular shade of blue the rarest

flower shade so hard to find

but there it is, the tuning, turning of her mind

a larkspur presence in a room less vivid

did he find her thus

almost the colour of skies

and chained to earth

diffident, larklike closer in time to him than others

she strayed on earth

despite the broken engagement

language is faltering she cried

and spoke to him from ancient tapestries

unraveling

I am no longer I she said

to the larkspur purling waters

when I arise from dreams of thee

from dreams of thee

no longer among the living

mary angela douglas 12 january 2014

NOTE ON THE POEM: THE LETTER WAS FOUND IN HER DESK NEVER SENT