Far To Go

the shadow sewn dream handstitched with little stars
worn in the twilight mind I have come to know
dusk following dusk and the blueness settling in

and the thin silver crust of what was once the moon
and shall be again I have noted as a bird call
among the birds of silver heard through watercolour clouds.

how will I fasten and where
the last words of my heart to the Unseen
seen or almost seen

from this earth wherever beauty breaks out again.
God is always near and those who went before
though in vanished and vanishing colors

all that I survey melts as snows into the atmosphere
and is a far flung cry from sphere to sphere
crowned among angels where I cannot hear

but only surmise
star showers notwithstanding
crimson deep the showers of rose

still I have far to go.

mary angela douglas 30 may 2017

Don't Blow It, Whispered The Wish Fairy

it's picture book pretty and candy box locked
it's the frock of all frocks in the shop window
you saved up for didn't you

it's the book you hid in the bookshop
hoping no one else would find it
of rarities most rare

it's the something out of sight
but on its way
almost any day

you can think of
any time now
don't say, tapping your foot, impatiently

or you'll cause delays
or the mail truck may break down
or go to the wrong house

the wrong town
with your treasured treasure
sent from afar

your wishing star come true
I'd be nice
If I were you.

mary angela douglas 30 may 2017

A Long Long Time Ago

here comes the perfect poem
twisting itself into multicoloured balloon
animals

for the toddler about to cry
puffing itself into clouds
pink ones for the babies

out in their strollers and sunbonnets
and now its shade and a leafy avenue
wouldn't want them to get overheated

here's the poem turning itself into a typewriter
for the writer thats run out of words
on deadline

fresh copy get your fresh copy here
into coffee with cream for the 
artist plein air in his spindly chair

waiting for the 

rain to stop and now it's an umbrella
parrot green with a thin stripe of gold
or an overcoat for you in the cold

when you just went out in your sweater
thinking you'd only be a minute
well a perfect poem's got everything in it

that you might ever need
oh it's the poem for any kind of weather

or a tasty treat when you've nothing to eat
in the house that's sweet or 

here's the perfect poem turning into the
perfect dress in lemon yellow with soft blue accents
thank you thank you said Cinderella

a long long time ago

mary angela douglas 30 may 2017

No Magic Word

reading old books at home
oh let the pages turn the wind
the clocks wind down again

have there ever been angels
like this before ask the clouds
almost out loud

you are reading to yourself
outside the world becomes snow
becomes the trees that graze the skies

and all the reasons why disappear
through the bubble wand haze
bubbling up from your primer school days

and the primrose laden

and the fairy tales regained
in primary colors
the fingerpainting hours reclaimed

on glossy paper shiny to the touch.
is it so much to ask to have
the tinsel down from the Christmas attic

and it not even Christmas
or the magic carpet rolled up in the corner
suddenly spring open

though you have said
no magic word.
and have neglected your dusting all day.

mary angela douglas 29 may 2017

What The Meadow Dreamed

to be flower filled
or whipperwilled
or bright with snows

then crowned with prairie rose
and then to laugh forget me not blue
with children running through

a fugitive princess to
unlock the clouds
and the Great Winds

so that blossom and thistle
may bow down
suddenly

to the Flower Maker.

mary angela douglas 27 may 2017

To The Royal Reader Of The Days Gone By

to the royal reader of the days gone by
it is given to know: the life of clouds pure green
insistencies of leaves, the rose

in the ruffled shade beyond the mays,
the grand felicitous opening and closing of spring
shading into the numberless summers.

not a golden wand do I bring you
or christen you near the fantastical waters
o sons and daughters in the borderlands

between the worlds.
stand in the drenching dreams from
the cloudburst of His heart your

hearts entwined and this is light
this is to stand against the
nights of bitterness

barterless in an interior splendor
beyond the courts of Time
and free.

mary angela douglas 27 may 2017

In The Summers' Day By Day

azure displaces azure in the summers' day by day
dream brimmed, rose trimmed remember when
lime leafed stretching farther away

than a heart could reach now

and formal, as though we were surrounded
by borders of the art noveau
and wreathed in flowers, county fair

or honey golden home and drop by drop or
fourth of july flared soda fountain shared
and the honeycomb is wrought

was wrought as if jeweled by junes
beyond compare so cream and clover rich.
what will it take to find you lime leafed

in the shade again of vanished backyard trees
and strawberry festival free in the let's pretend
as we were then

waiting for the storybook recitals
and the grandfathers naming the constellations
and the scarlet maples so far off

in the sheep clouded distances
and the neighborhood skies:

pastels shading into
the dusk of carports,
sheet music learned and relearned

the gardenia furling songs.

mary angela douglas 28 may 2017

Then Vanishing Away

On the Legend of the Lady of Shalott

her face in a dream floats on the waters
or like nebulae among deep stars
in a field of vision

yet unmarred by tears
because it is too still.

where are you she must ask again
of all her years or we may ask
on her stead

though clouds have no answer

nor does the dusk,
dressed in the blue of the departed hours.

is it enough that once you were weaving

all that the heart could sense
from distances, from renunciations
made gladly

until you broke in several pieces

the mirror and the crenallated view
fused in that instant into a valediction
as if all the petals that ever were had been

blown past suddenly their aprils
into the irretrievable.

not even the legend was ours in the end
in the dedicated schoolroom
from such a delicate web unmoored

you were
though we cried to see

your starlike resolution fade
scattered dewlike on the lawns
of all the ages

and the vigils of dawns unnumbered

or in the antique books
then, vanishing away;we cannot look,
the pages melting like snows

mary angela douglas 26 may 2017

I Wanted To Dream Of The Life Of Clouds

I wanted to dream of the life of clouds
the scurrying of leaves in small vortexes
illuminations of

the rose red rainbows singular in the world
to flow near stars and to become that silver
or the quince green

indistinguishable from moonlight
in the clouds the crystals freeze
into half and quarter rainbows

composing their own music
and the birds flow too
and dream so that then

I am dreaming of clouds and within that
the clouds dream of birds
the birds dream of

who knows perhaps the snows
the snows dream of descending
into the vast gardens

of the first earth oh I wanted to dream
I wanted to dream of the history of clouds
to be done with the history of earth

to turn into the sweeping rains
and over vast seas
to dissolve

to be mist on the faces of little children
and to disappear
into opalescent hemispheres

so far from here

to become the breath of angels
and to know
life is fleeting as all poets know

but the clouds do not know
in their motion what is going
what is going away

who is going away
they are themselves
incapable of tears

of wrenching themselves from the years accumulated
I want to sleep in the orchards where the pink clouds
descend

becoming the flowering of the trees
and to float petal like to earth
and then to swirl upwards suddenly

mary angela douglas 22 may 2017

I Am A Number Or A Series Of Numbers

to the Elizabethan poet Thomas Dekker ("to add to golden numbers golden numbers...")

I am a number or a series of numbers
in someone's report, file, analysis
data compiled of the waves goodbye


and the reasons reasoned why of

generalities poorly understood, understated
colorless, faded from
the apricot nomenclature

on the run
the aqua tinted illustration no longer

blenched to a blanker page in a diffident age in invisible ink
or what they think resigned, confined

when all the results are in, the votes counted
the games of let's pretend discounted
I am a mere tick of the box

a heart without locks
that can be raided at will
by those who stoke their tills

and lack for no skill in robbing me
of any soul at all

and I do not know the writing on the wall
exactly when, how, or where
God will dispose of them

who think of me not as a person
rare, exceptional
but just fair game for

forever counting me over and over, out
in the rain
but I hope it is soon

and somewhere where

they can't find me
and resume the census

mary angela douglas 21 may 2017

Councilmen Came And Took The Sun Away

councilmen came and took the sun away

right where the children played

and they decreed

no more praying on your knees

To the God of the heavenlies

you pray to us instead

for oh your daily bread

and so much more.

but in a time of war

cold or otherwise

how could they know of

the heartbeat that prays on

as saints are taught to do

some children too

in dire emergency

when far from home.

make every heart His throne

the angels cried

in this, our mercenary exile.

there is no civility

there are no verities

without the sunrise of His love

between us

mary angela douglas 20 may 2017

One Dream Day And Counting Backwards Mirror Writing Wise

you'd think it would be easy to retrace
the misstep that took you there
but somehow in dream logic

this would never occur to you
as a thing to do
so the only hope is

to suddenly wake up
startled by the cat
or something like that

a singing telegram or two
or something falling off a ledge
I pray it isn't you

here comes the Red Queen
make that two reflected in the
dream puddles now it's starting

to rain and every drop
holds another Red Queen
but you don't dream scream

with nothing coming out
because you're Alice
dressed in blue

and there's nothing left to do
but say
you're nothing but a card game

card game everyone and that's the cue
for the Kitty knowing what to do
upset the figurine

and it's gone to smithereens
and so would you
if you'd had to stay

in Wonderland for more
than just one dream day.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2017

The Dress I Could Not Buy

the faintest swirl of pastels in a mist
or roses, roses garden kissed
tea roses, pale green shadowed

on a garden wall
or blue and sapphire shirred
as birdcalls trellised in the dawns

or tied with a velvet sash
sheer as all the snows there ever were
pale skirts impearled with crystalline crystals

no violets missing from the corsage
and every pink in place
or something slight with lace

embroidered over time
the dress the soul should wear
as evening chimes when the day is spent

with Time itself used up in lilies

with the fragrance from old gardens on the air
and starshine anywhere you look
a dress from a book I read

where everything is said as it should be
and echoes in the memory
becoming becoming as the soul should

shod in gold going toward God
ever more radiant
immune to distress

the perfect dress

mary angela douglas 18 may 2017

I Wanted To Say Things With Cherries On Top

I wanted to say things with cherries on top
I explained to the dream people
in my dream but they got up

and filed out of the room all single file
and lemon sour
and I'm in a bower of flowers

rose upon rose and gladioli ridden
and rid of them
and I say: strawberries, cream

and opalescence opalescene, gemmy jeweled rings
shiny, shiny things to laugh at the wind with
bubble floating all rainbowing

and swing in the swings 

and I can't hear you disparaging me dream people
and Grandfather comes with the church and the steeple
made out of his hands

the pink clowns made out of Grandmother's dinner napkins.
am I kin to you I wonder about the dream meanies
when all I want to do even as a grownup is

say to you something in lemon lime or mercury dimed
and I am happy most of the time
and I'll pretend you're all made of snow

and you're not anyone I used to know
you're only like ice cream melted.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2017

I Dreamed There Was A Porcelain World

I dreamed there was a porcelain world
then someone slipped and took it with them
and we were all fragments of this world slipping too

as if we were bleeding light and scattered
not made whole and delicate delicate still
like shards of partial memories of a

porcelain world all pink as a shell
its sunrise and aquamarine its sea
and these are broken waves

we're counting in a fractured summer
one, two, three oh not in whole numbers
fractions we were of a former loveliness

and partially dreamed and dreaming
oh that the glass green seas would come over us
and wash us or someone someone wish us back

to what we used to be.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2017

Oh To Dress In Crisp Cottons, The August Percales

oh to dress in crisp cottons, the august percales
in the withering heat
to dab on gardenia perfume surreptitiously

only because you feel you are a flower

and hour by hour to read the summer paperback
adventure picked out from the school catalog
to watch the lawn grow until

grandfather mows it down
goodbye to the clover beds then
and the feeling that our yard could

grow to be a field.
how much we loved the summers then
the being at home between school years

and then the fluttering feeling and
the fluttering leaves as though they were
in sympathy at every

first day of school in the brand new plaid.
I want to go back to the past and
learn it all again in fresh notebooks

ruled paper in a colorful binder
dawns as milk

bright as country snow before the bus came
only this time without worrying.
and wear small velvet bows

that clip on in the shade of lime green
and curl my hair again in an old fashioned style
dreaming of nothing feeling that time was an ocean

billowing before us
blue as any sky 
when seen from that great distance

and beside the guardian trees.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2017

The Poets Neglected Who Gave Their Lives For Words

words with no music they lamented
and so their words grew wings
and so they conjured the stone

into a heart
and pulled from their deserts, springs
buried in pauper's graves or cut down

by false revolution's knaves or at a tyrant's word
how the world would be missing
without them. the secret world

they saved from perishing.
and did they beg for bread
and did their blood turn to ink instead

in the last chapters
to the ink they wrote in having no other left
on a tablet of cloud and derelict

despised in the public squares
did no one sigh for them but merely
account them fools for singing?

too many times fallen on hard times,
swords of paper gilded to the hilt
notwithstanding.

I weep for their passing
that the glad world
did not greet them always

nor did it understand
they were angelic couriers
sent to bind our wounds

while themselves wounded
unto death,
unto the last breath transcribed.

mary angela douglas 16 may 2017

Let There Be Light He Said

let there be light He said
the king of shadows fled
the rose of the sky came open

far above our dreaming heads
still men have wondered
past all generations' dread

when wlll the new world come
when we see face to face 
the fountains of His grace

and when all tears are brushed aside
and the tides all turned to gold.
in a snowflake moment when the Story's told

of how the darkness came to extinguish Him
while men in catacombs of lead prayed  gold
pure gold instead

though flayed alive and burned and ah alas

though spurned though spurned though spurned
bold lions are not fed by what in the soul remains
this we will claim though in hushed tones through the prison bars

we still remember who You are

and then the gates swing all ajar
and we take flight
the emblems of his heart alight

and the Rose of sorrow comes apart
the angels murmuring too
let light pure light 

descend from You
and ceaselessly.

mary angela douglas 15 may 2017

Of A Sunday

of a sunday you made tic tac toes in the diamond snows
then crossed them out
and danced on the crust

of the bread crumbs left to you I could just
crumble away but is it factored in
when the just are not just

and the merciful held in contempt
I long to know.

writing the codes of the law
in His own blood the Saviour stood
past the olive woods he loved:

but barely under the load the Lodestar
mocked and defiled

and I think of this awhile
when I consider the law
and the vagaries of wearing white

after Labour day surprises, coteries
of being accounted nothing
for this and so many things

that dear God cannot matter to You.
So I play tic tac toe in the snow
with my functional shoes

not being in the "know" but in

being used
my used up imagination
freezes up the tears remaining unshed
that Jesus bled and bled

and still was misunderstood
a millennium later
in the world that just can

cross you out of it
despite the Cross
relying on

old break room news
and getting up
and leaving the room

with not even an afterthought.

mary angela douglas 15 may 2017

The Haunting Of Roses, Of Gardenias In The Side Yard

the haunting of roses, of gardenias in the side yard
we imagined in the silver rains
and in the lanes immemorial

a stirring amid the cottage vines
birdsong too we heard but was it there
or was it a something in the air disguised

the aftermirage of pastel shimmering skies
every time you closed your eyes
to sleep a velvet sleep

the petals of unfolding sweet
and you dream you are the haunting of roses
the gardenias in the side yard

and it's you returning to the brick house under the pines
where the wind whines
like the small dog scratching to get in

and we laugh because we've scared ourselves again
without really knowing that we could
oh knock on wood

let Heaven be your coverlid
as it is for the roses under the snow
in the Christmas countdown, far to go

we've eaten our Halloween candies up
and now the door seems different than
it did before: and supper far away and chores:

comeuppance time Ray Bradbury chimed
and you hear something soft outside
and our eyes are glazed and we ask

is it you and there's no answer
from the one you knew
was there just a moment ago

and you think of the twilight zone
and each of us thinks we're quite alone
with the quilts all up to our chins

with the story we don't dare end
pretending to think of tomorrow's lunch at school while
contemplating the deep and the pooled

shadows of the doll on the tufty green chair
and the glitter of something on the stair!
it is the Spooky Bride, oh HIDE

and we try so hard not to think

of attic sounds or the kitchen sink with its drip drop
the looming of the kitchen mop the sudden
shaking of the ground

and the haunting of roses outside the blinds
or the swings we used to ride just yesterday
oh it's too much

swinging by themselves..
when the winds are hushed just now,
and stilled...

mary angela douglas 15 may 2017

I Think Of Books Like A River Through The World

[For Fred W. Allsopp of Allsopp and Chapple (Arkansas bookshop) fame who died before I was born but whom i always wished I had met]

I think of books like a river through the world,
second hand they deem them but you know that they've
seen more than several lives

and sometimes, centuries, continents breaking apart
where they were stored or in the heart
behind battle lines, in the violet cul de sacs

of the backwater bric a brac cottages disguised
like emissaries to the future they were launched
so once upon

a Christmas favorite of a bygone year
with illustrations as limpid clear then
as cradle dreams

and brightly, gilt upon the spines and now

the gold is coming off, the pages foxed
not out of the box but come to you
in your prime with water damage, hidden sobs

like a token from a subway no one rides anymore
but here it is at your door so you get on
unaccountably late

and fated to understand things no one next to you on break
or at the automat selecting the chiffon pie
could even imagine you knew

watching the rain blow down the avenues or
your hotel coffee getting cold-
while everything around you recedes

though you can't say how 

your head, as they say
in the clouds...
and the window panes beaded with jewels

as you turn the page...

mary angela douglas 13 may 2017

Chivalry Is Not Dead Came Over The Rattling Wires

to those who imagine as if they could
they have overthrown the chivalric, the mythic
stalwart who now less and less each hour

triumphantly report the trending dour

are feebly telegraphing us, say,
from the scenes of their irrelevant ancient disasters-
take down THIS message

magnified through Time
that none who lived before are gone
that they quest on

and in their questing live
more vividly than those
who imagine as if they could

that they have overthrown in their modernity
the Good, all those who enchanted the stones
to human speech and

were unashamed of griefs, of faith, of God remembered
of wrongs assuaged in remembering,
battling on

who lived in Springtime daylight through
blizzards of brimming and blossoming fear
intrepid in their flights and

greener than the green that surrounds you now
this May's commencements , through heavy nights

they kept the freshness of a dream
unto the ebbing of their day
the young men fervently schooled to learn

their chivalry in turn
before the decimating wars 

oh how will you wipe their blood away their scars
the stains on every page of glory beyond this Age
of disparagement as far as star is from star

still their angels stand in the breach
the heavenly Door ajar
and will not-

give way

mary angela douglas 9 may 2017