In Memorium, To The Poets Before

they grew into song as the trees grew into clouds
and then, rooted, forever bidding the farewell
to the cloud songs drifting;

and jeweled tears pooled in the wishing wells
and dripped from the hidden ferns. then, bowed,
they learned to grow apart

in the kingdom of wounds.
what is another wound to the green heart
already wounded before starting out

I asked the clouds in tribute to their sheer memory
counting the immensities left to me
and snowed under.

is it any wonder
I half read in my sleep not knowing what
I longed to know, the deeps of beauty, how it felt

to be lost and not to be seeking the way out

amid the margins gleaming and the dreaming the

dreaming that and that only they flew into song
as the birds fly into the sun or the moon,
the windowpanes of stars all afternoon

brushing their wings against the silences.

mary angela douglas 18 february 2017