[to
Charlotte Bronte]
Dove
grey is the unfolding sky
above
the lucid dreaming of her soul
shaken-
still awake at midnight
the
singular one in the household
to
show
there
is no love without truth
and
she must leave, she knows.
stern
conscience holds her lantern in the rains
and
all she sees is God through torrents, through disdain,
through
all the villages begging bread
from the living and the dead
from
those who feign.
from
bakers, tradesmen who won’t comprehend
she
is the soul’s white flame
not
derelict.
once
she was walking down a faery lane
that
ripened into summer's gold.
once
she was painting ships without a rudder
pale
green and foundering in an icy sea
somehow,
still at liberty in the austere-extravagant imagination-
far
above her given station
but
not, oh not yet free.
ah,
now, Lord Jesus, come and see
the
frail figure lashed to the landscape
in
no watered silk, in her wilderness
and to the hilt:
indomitable
in Thee.
mary angela douglas 9 april 2013 rev. 28 march 2017;25 may 2019;rev 23 september 2020.
