To Grow Up Knowing How To Arrange Flowers

to grow up knowing how to arrange flowers
in the foyer of the universe
to finish the census of the stars before daybreak

to carry in one small purse of red velvet
a single amber coin
the toll to fairy land

to wear on either hand
separate emeralds
then

to play emerald music
on the baby grand, both hands together
came the Grandmother's command

this was rather dreamed

than planned
to catch the lace of the lilac train
in one hand

resembling Spring
to pose that way without pretense
yet knowing how the one ray

fell across your shoulder, with you
in the landscape,
forever looking back

and lingering in the snow lights

remembering the highlights
of a poetic education
and the carousel  sunset's blur

of the summers that passed
without saying a word.

mary angela douglas 30 september 2017

Composition

you could see them if you tried harder.
you used to when you were less wise
see angels in every disguise,

towers in clouds
believing in great surprises
slow at learning to tell Time so

that it could always, suddenly
be Christmas
in the sheer middle of the day.

all the arbors were yours
to see and to say
even without putting too fine

a point on it
penciling the daydreams in

you could write in gold of the let's pretend
the block letters before you were told
it was just an exercise

torn out of a piffling notebook
with your little  name scrawled in the right hand corner.

you were not wise, they said and how would you get ahead
who thought each letter was a garden;
every word,

a rose composed.

mary angela douglas 30 september 2017

All The Rose Colours

then we began to learn what sometimes disappears,
sometimes, returns
spring flowers, pink and white

all hours that did delight

and sun and moon each day
charm braclets strewn with the charms
differing in a way white gold as from white gold

next time they're jangled;
tangled hair in light and light itself
is tangled trees whenever we see them

rust or green in summer full of birds
and birdsong comes surprisingly at
evening too

and then the morning dew
we wanted to fill our small hands with
in order to be rich such diamonds they appeared

o all the jewels God ever made
for us, for us! they seemed to fade
and yet there is the glade you knew

when you were two, each summer,
there is the shade.
so slow yet step by step

we encountered snow, its drifting
and dreams that come and go
oh, the rose blown

and then we were breathing in roses
and wanted to wear
all the rose colours...

mary angela douglas 30 september 2017

To A Small Child Falling Down

it seems a little thing to those
who have forgotten how it feels
falling down, your socks about your heels

such a small distance from the ground
in front of the others:
falling down.

where do the instant tears spring from?
already you are little, fragile,
out of the shell but a little spell

in the backyard, pavement's world
you don't yet know that well
and then you're suddenly brought lower

as if someone, something smacked your soul.
and it stings in your soul more than they even know
kissing your knee into roses

and you know that something in you

has come apart
something that just a while ago
had its small start-

star breathed from heaven.

falling down.
catastrophe.
as though you could never be mended again

the first hurt's the worst.
the other ones after
come more easily.

mary angela douglas 29 september 2017

Evergreen

all Christmases were the same they sighed
but I was in the music box turning
when the snows came and I can say otherwise

of the candy caned entranced
and the holly berry dance
in white chiffon with little

silver stars
remember who you are
my Grandmother said

so softly when you
are cold despite
the cherry quilted carcoat

and cannot follow your

snow blurred footprints home
oh I will carry the Star,
this evergreen moment

light years on
i sang in a tinseled song
but she was gone

though I left the candlelit
memory on at any cost,
the windows coated

thickly, still, with the caroling stars

mary angela douglas 29 september 2017

Sometimes I Live

sometimes I live
on a thimbleful of sleep
two thimblefuls of coffee

whatever is there once a month
at the food annex
where I feel like

i am being fed with a dropper.
small farm animal I
sometimes think I am

perhaps a lamb.
Christ's lamb I hope.
I am.

sometimes oh most of the time it's pink and gold
inside my mind like a spring orchard
even while I wait in line.

mary angela douglas 26  september 2017

Are They

are they holding up the train
we wondered, waiting in the rain
smiling, trying to make

the best of things again
it seems so long
that we've been standing

in the mist and fog
under the overhang
not hearing the train bells clang

the steam roll in
and packed and ready to go
with overshoes for the snows

a tin of comfits and a silver ring
a pale footprint and a wish to sing
if only we could remember the words

oh soon they will come
you turn to say
I turned around and it was day

and you were gone.
it's been so long
are they holding up the train we said

hungry and wishing for tea and toast
when you were you and I was me
not knowing we were ghosts.

mary angela douglas 25 september 2017

The Face You Wear In Dreams

is there a lace that shines like
the face you wear in dreams
its own mirror

paper cut, snow sequenced
from the gift wrap glimmer
the silver children found

in the dresser drawers
then, they draw more
and it

registers the light
from distant stars, their little songs
how close they are: the yellow stars,

their candy wrapper gold;

you breathe them in
thinking: this has never happened,
will it happen again

yet it all seems so familiar
the town laid out like a
Christmas village

only dime size now
with no little trains
to take you from town

and time is everywhere

a sea so small and deep
you could cross it in a nutshell
or vanish like the twelve

princesses under ground

the ones who danced all night
and you mended their shoes with
small flowers, bits of crystal

before first light.
now you float in the shallow end of sleep
and the sky is peach

and time is so generous
you gather it up in baskets
tied with bright ribbons

goodbye you try to say before you wake
but it happens too fast.

mary angela douglas 25 september 2017

Wherever You Go

kings and queens kept losing their crowns

this was why the grass sparkled in the early a.m.s

when the school bus rounded the corners.

our theory, don't you like it?

no more play now

no one ever told us!

we continued the discussion all day

at the tea parties in our minds

pass the sugar cakes please

in between dreaming three plus three

there was also what to do about

wearing the same pink dress as yesterday

and if a curtsy was necessary

or a piano recital bow and should there be

pink satin bows on the dress sleeves?

let the paper dolls decide

and keep the key my Grnadmother said

with Walter de la Mare

to the cupboard with the banbury cakes

for me me me

well, I will.

well anyhow no one had to say twice to us

or even at all

each year in the Fall

when in our plaid dresses

we headed out (and with new plaid satchels!)

your mind is still free

wherever you go

even while they're assigning you

homework, for the next day.

and especially when it snows

and I think, anyway,

that would have been the best thing

to know of all,

if we had even needed to learn it.

mary angela douglas 24 september 2017

ref. to de la Mare in the poem and allusion is from the following poem;

The Cupboard

by Walter de la Mare

I know a little cupboard,
With a teeny tiny key,
And there's a jar of Lollypops
For me, me, me.

It has a little shelf, my dear,
As dark, as dark can be,
And there's a dish of Banbury Cakes
For me, me, me.

I have a small fat grandmamma,
With a very slippery knees,
And she's Keeper of the Cupboard,
With the key, key, key.

And when I'm very good, my dear,
As good as good can be,
There's Banbury Cakes, and Lollypops
For me, me, me.

Were You That Child

were you going to be that child
floating over the landscape
in a cherry balloon

your gloves from Sunday school
and in cherry velvet well, of course
pointing out to the clouds

the various countries below
in pink and green.
reciting Hans Andersen in your sleep

down to the last detail of the darning needle's
adventures oh we will sew the clouds together
you said so that the cities of snow may come

where all is blotted out except the sun
except the sun
were you that child of light

and you carried bouquets to the dances
sprayed in gold
as if Midas lived at home

gold flowers, gold shoes
bending no rules
happy in the law that made chiffon

you were that child
with puppet shadows on the wall conversant
and full the tide of your afternoons

when listening to Debussy on glass records.
hush, the music is glass do not break it
and so you were very still

the princess of stillness
gathering in
the majesties of let's pretend

and when and how and where
in the picture enyclopedias the world was

and rains filled with echoes
sparkles in the wind,
the comfort of old trees.

mary angela douglas 24 september 2017

When Poetry Becomes Propaganda

when poetry becomes propaganda
by the time that has taken root all over the world
I would have finished you would have finished

they would have finished their waxen wings
and flown into the sun
rather than to hear one more lie disguised

in your phoenix fleece and weeping

ah poetry fallen archangel, wounded bird
in the mire of gold I found you and I
cared and lifted you above

and remembered your former skies
your cathedral heights soaring into God
the one they no longer name.

am I unwise even to write this here
that I remember when you were

clear sapphire through and through
and I could see the skies
the tops of trees fomenting only green.

why have they taken your name and
rammed it into a  perverse flag and turned you into
a nagging day in and out

and beauty has fled into the wilderness without you
where there are no more flowers.

mary angela douglas 23 september 2017

A Bit Of A Recurring Nightmare

I'd like to move out of bogus land, if I could
then again, how would you know 
when you'd crossed the border?

bogus land never ends;
it's only interrupted by oceans, rivers,
baby creeks,

silent moments instead of prayer.
what would I take to be on my way from there?
a pot of jam, black bread

like in the fairy tales?
bogus land is an infinite jail.
even with salami in the lunch pail;

delectable meat loaf sandwiches...

you try to speak

but your words flare into sudden roses
and are gone, singed on the air.
you fling your words up all firework

pretty in the night skies.
but the air is damp with all the lies.
the way you see things in your mind,

it just doesn't come to light.
what went wrong I asked the ghosts
from city to city from flight to flight

and in between.
the ghosts didn't see me.
I was their ghost.

how do you like that,
I said then, scraping the butter on
the last of the toast.

who can win in bogus land.

what would it even mean
if you did?

mary angela douglas 23 september 2017

They Spoke In Waves

some learned to speak in waves
not to be detected
never to be forgotten

like the sea
like summer light and sequined
on the rivieras of dream

though in reality's subzero
they imagined palaces with
lunar balconies

what they pleased
and gestured only slightly
to the skies so that snows ceased

cruel winds as well
they spoke without speaking
as flowers may

even the dew
as leaves along the avenue
and in the square

the pure white square
as in Malevich they found a
where to stand

as in infinite light
without being rounded up for it.

mary angela douglas 23 september 2017 

La Vita Nuova

we'll see the rivers in the sky
of all that starlight going by
and flowering trees from space

when earth turns pink and green and plum
in another place as we are watching, rapt
and breathe in the solar winds and all of that

rainbowed excess

when cosmic rose, seraphic saffron light
our way into the gloaming of the day
when grief has passed

like this summer's clouds
and each cathedral child
can dream out loud

the visionary new meant from all time to be
the God of love and truth anew exalted
all heaven and earth new vaulted.

each broken heart, reprieved.

mary angela douglas 22 september 2017

Even If You Stare

speaking of God out loud in the pancake house
on a first name basis
and that's the truth I saw some people

shift in their booth

and look at me as though from Mars
I had descended and upended earth's last copy of
the Big Book of the Big Bang Theory.

I am so weary I said like some Poe heroine
fainting away an emblem of a mythical day
that crumbled along with the bacon

looks like I've awakened oh
I'm so sorry it troubles you

that I speak His name in gold 
and up there too
with all the stars He made.

and i love pancakes too

and I'm not from the zoo
but I'll say I love you to Him oh
any old where.

even if you stare.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2017

He Died Tonight

he died tonight
his ragtag army said
turning away from the Capital

trying to think of other things instead
he died tonight
or by late afternoon

and paid their golden tax
and we are left now to resume
life or its semblance

with the questions we would

have asked him had he lived
one minute more
walking along the shore

or murmuring among ourselves:
what sunset's here?
or is it the world's strange end

that ever he called us friends

when we went on from year to year
so blithe and astonished
by the kind of man he seemed

even more by the One he was
and what he dreamed of us, insisted
we could be...

tearswept is the time of doves
departing the arc

finding nothing left that's green
and the Flood gone over our heads
while we repeat, rehearse the dread

of the last, few days and which we

argued would shine in His kingdom most
the Father. Son or Holy Ghost
and who of us was closest.

oh God

that we were dead
and not the King
the ointment's broken now

in the myrrh scented dark
o Jesu here in my heart I finally see
we are your wandering stars

destined to be

who in your rusted armor now are
thrust into a dissolving world.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2017

The Leaves, Dreaming It

october soon, you thought;
throwing it all again
into such an acute soft focus.

and the firecracker leaves
exploding and the air
rich with the golden lost,

the rubies flung suddenly
at our feet in heaps.
who are we to be walking through

the jeweled leaves; already their
countdown has started
and watercoloured intensively

the skies direct convincingly
the azure arrows through the heart.

will they funnel up from the ground,
the leaves, imploringly, under some
tawny spell or

prayer of the pearl grey doves

as though the trees. the trees
were still with them, like a ghosting love;
how can we sail apart? they

sing, flying back to the branches
that released them.
and I could cry, as if I were

still a little girl to see them whirling,
trying to get back-
the twigs now, one by one unlit

and cannot be lit again.

is it their light is going backwards
and flickering so that you almost envision:
saints in the afternoon?

or will this be forwarded, late or soon,
to winter's as yet, unknown address where
we will be salvaged

asked the candid,
raveling, raveled the cherished
till they disappeared

into the furnace of the years.

and it's only the leaves dreaming it
in the upward gusts of wind
or we, who were stranded for so long.

or me, at the beginning again
in the roundelay of this song.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2017

And Slip Away

they will chop in little pieces
what you thought you were
almost greeting you at the food bank

or in the grocery store
or looking somewhere else
when you try to meet their gaze

to say to them look there's nothing to be
afraid of here:
sudden poverty isn't catching.

or maybe it isn't about
the fact that you're down there
and they're not.

never have you wished more
for the three good wishes unwasted.
as it is

I dream of letting go.
of occasions fit for the frothy dress
the velvet bandeau

the one of yellow sapphires set or of
the early snows;
of space, lodged so far from allthis

so that it almost chokes the soul
imagining the way back
from canyon to canyon

as in the intricate equations
of our major scientists
seeking the circumference

of the vastness between us
when neither heat nor light nor any human sound
comes to us in waves anymore

in the luxuriant afternoons...

harness the polar winds the frozen over smiles
I say to them from my cartesian plane
where it echoes not and the high winds rise.

all this is how it seems said no glittering fairies
while i, the I I was and am, can barely stand, must flee
the caustic breakroom stare, the looming severances of pay.

the cost of living this way is remaining yourself

in God, regardless, my adequate angels say: o search, oh search
for the boat of dreams.
and slip away.

mary angela douglas 19 september 2017

Seeing Clouds In Faces

something shifts and I see angels in your face
the light of the previously unknown
or in my own, in the mirror

come to full flower now

but what was sown I know not
nor do I dare.
as though they had been to the moon

your children
you thought they were in their room
but you did not check and see.

but a grace has fallen on them
like an evening dew
something askance

you notice at breakfast, the very next day
but what can you say?
but from a far Kingdom

not the one you knew, they knew
we know, we will have known
we shall know

all the tenses there at the same time
simultaneously thinks the one who
looks up everything in the dictionary

but there's no dictionary for this.
we are all mysteries.
and other mysteries pass back and forth

continuously unbeknownst to us
across the sky of our faces
as if they were clouds

clouding Clouds

mary angela douglas 17 september 2017

Better It Was

better it was that the castle lights were on
that the princess slogging through rain and mud
could see more clearly

the way through.
that from the halls came
the soft sounds of musicales

of court dances
then in favor.
how would they know her

among the coloured fountains
the spray of the wild sea on her cheek
lost amid locked gardens

in her merino cloak, bedraggled
with the tired look in her eyes
I could not surmise nor she

a certain nobility of posture that remained
a retience an elegance more of soul
then of the golden shoe

the ivory petticoat showing through
the some quality in the face
and in her clouded eyes

would gain her entrance.
even in disguise.

mary angela douglas 16 deptember 2017

Shouldn't It Be True

shouldn't it be true
that we should become known
only for the fact

that light shone upon us
and afterwards

that snows flew crystalline
when melting was always
within.

and we lived in a secret music
counting the beats in between
the irrefutable scenes:

what is the soul
was studied in many ways
in the great universities

and in the byways
I sighed that the soul is
where the poem grows

and fends for itself,
where forevers begin
and cannot cease glowing.

who are we that light
shone upon us, that there were roses.
that we were that privileged

that even the nights were
vivid with His stars

that we should have been
and that we are:

given, each one, the key
to something imperishable;
nor confined to learning

the history of zero alone
standing outside of Time
oh clouded Chronos, nevertheless,

still breathing beauty in.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2017

Then We Were

then we were waiting a long time
for the sun to become the moon
for silver to fall from the skies

so that it could be called "rain"
and I was standing still
near the honeysuckle vines

and could not tell you why
only something out of Time
was scented there.

how summer shaded into September
and it was the time for learning numbers
for the clock on the wall

and heavy Roman numerals
and I thought: is this all
not knowing that each letter

would become a door
and behind each door
another world

so that we spoke roses
into the air, slight ferns,
earth turning

and the code of the stars.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2017

The Emperor Dreams Of Tailors

to you it may seem hard
measuring out invisible cloth by the yard
I don't know.

the Emperor will wait
for lavish cloth no one can underrate
figured in stars or gold medallions

in silk, moire but never
the fabric of the day to day
the colours of the sun

when resting on the sun dial
or by angels spun
and in the looking glass

he's sure so sure
of cherry buttons
bound on fast

and even the slippers match
in which he treads
the light fantastic

or the halls of dread.

mary angela douglas 14 september 2017

Horse Story

then we were at the top of the hill
and we rushed down
the amber hours falling all around

I dreamed I was like the wind
and with the wind I flew
then it was school again

and time to sit so still
and daydream, sometimes,
out the window sill

where the scarlet leaves
followed their course.
oh I am like a horse

who can run forever
though a small one.
this I knew

and thinking it through,
I know it still.

mary angela douglas 13 september 2017

These Things

these things I brought with me from the long ago:
rose tinted clouds, my favorite Christmas snows
the ones outside the castle

the glow of That star
the map to where you are
when you are dreaming

or locked inside the twilight hour
with the key ringing from my
moon of whitest gold.

the valentine requited,

the stories I was told
I told myself
the ones that caused sad

angels to breathe past the rustling of trees.
my harp, of pleasing sounds.
no one knows but me

where the case that holds these lies
in the trunk (wrapped in silk
with its disguise of Spring

woven out of a lily's dream

a midnight's choir.
ah, my mother's lyre, restrung
and all her prayers impearled

for Kingdom Come

mary angela douglas 13 september 2017

My Small Flag

not in vain oh Lord have I planted my small flag
and housed myself under the underpass
when the storms flew over me, in Your care

aware of your presence and of little else
and You and the angel of death passing over me
was no castastrophe.

no small flag have I planted.
the hill was vast I climbed alone
and it has grown

mountain sized
oh realize I loved only You
though all the earth should pass

I plant my small flag
and know that it will last
though the earth slides off
its axis

and falls off spinning
when all of this has passed.

mary angela douglas 11 september 2017

Goodbye To The TIme Of Standing Still

goodbye to the time of standing still
I said to the backyard whippoorwill
goodbye to the sunsets at my door

to the honeyed shadows on the floor
to everything I was before.
earth is mercenary as you know

my mother wrote so long ago
in a letter filled with so many things..
but Heaven once seen

can't be denied
despite the liars in disguise
the knaves you meet along the road

you traveled leaving your fair home.
you'll still keep deep
inside your mind

the time of standing still.

mary angela douglas 11 september 2017

Tales My Mother Told Me

I placed my tears in a golden casque
the ones I found through the looking glass
where I grew small and smaller.

when will you ever grow taller
mocked the creatures
in their ruffs

and in their evening tiaras
when through all the dusks
i groped my way

into the ending of the Play
and into the countless
Who Invited Yous

that came my way.

Don't grow confused
my mother said
when everything that's in your head

is bartered by them
for any old thing.
rebuild the wastes

and find the trace
of the gold they stole from you.
in season or out

and whether your dress is appropriate or not
treasure o treasure
the things they have forgot.

mary angela douglas 11 September 2017