Cakes And Other Matters

sometimes the bright winged close at hand
gaze into oblivious faces
while you are busy thinking other things

what did you forget to bring
or will it rain
is the house key where you left it

they go on outside of time
laughing in their airy castles
unconcerned about the relish

for the hot dogs
or if the dog ran away.
how many layers of time are there

anyway the rare grown child may say
thinking of ice cream for banana splits
a theory of the universe like this

or with not much money left to spend
if the layer cake dusted with coconut flakes
and a single cherry

will still taste good bought day old
next Tuesday.

mary angela douglas 31 october 2017

Now, More Than Ever

now more than ever we need your support
the brochure proclaims
and, in times like these...

in times like these I dream of other things
the network of veins in the gold leafed
how the trees stand in the gales

with their roots largely unseen
largely unseen I dream
while the wind carries the gold leafed,

gold leafed over the walls and over all
what small kites are these
and no strings attached

and I will go like Yeats somewhere
and lift the latch and light the lamp
far from these scenes where so many need

a gold I do not own
and be alone
thinking outside of time, brochures

the water turned to wine
my home to dust yet 
still I see it shine

there in the heavenlies
where gold leaves never fall
nor dreams decline:

where only God is necessary.

mary angela douglas 31 october 2017

You Want To Say

you want to say
let the clouds move themselves away
because they are so high

you cannot go to them
you are not the agency the angels whisper
through which this can happen

and so many things are that way
we are helpless before clouds
before a stilled wind

before a friend in an unsolved case

and we must wait
before every locked gate
never knowing till when.

I move my feet sometimes heavily
down a street I don't really want to be on
but dancing in snow

that covers up the things I'm not likely to know
and like a slate wiped clean
the entire scene sparkles.

I am waiting on snows.
I am waiting on a door to close
or on all the locksmiths in the world

busy, on other calls, 

mary angela douglas 30 october 2017

The Starving Minor Poet Before He Finds Himself

sometimes half asleep random sentences flare
like occasional fireworks firing in a dim dusk
so much so that I wish I could go back and

insert them in an old theme, school papers
by the ream, you know:
the ones we had to write 

using our imaginations. (groan)

things like, I met the Marquesa with the parquet floors.
or silence came sifting down a silver shore 
and the moon was sullen.

or waxen rubies flowed down the candelabra
while the princess remained stoic.
what will I do with these sentences.

why can't they come to me with a little practicality

like for instance, enumerating once in a pink moon,
the things I'll forget at the grocery store.
tomorrow at noon: something to the tune of:

red onions, pearl onions, green
and red peppers shone:
tomato sauce for the meat loaf,..

waffle cones


or Easter ham's on sale or things I could eat up:
baked pineapple in an ice cream cup
or eggplant, breaded with a pork chop

not, His head on a chopping block
the Duke wished he had shown less temerity.

it's always: the queen commands you go but she won't say
where. or sampling his own wares Simple Simon bid
the Prime Minister

go buy double cherry tarts and butterscotch custards by the score...

Ye Angels of the English language,
what are these sentences for?

mary angela douglas 29 october 2017

They Had Words Quince Bright

they had words quince bright,
or quartz humming all the night
rainbow rimmed, rose trellised

close at hand until when
sleight of hand Kingdoms, come!
and us with our silky succession of scarves...

or velvet knighted and seed pearled
one by one down the hidden passages
the ladies in waiting in rag made curls

caroled and caroling beckoned and beckoning:

words whirled worlds toward the Raggedy Ann,
twirled like jewel box ballerinas unmoored, 
off the table top above the dresser drawers

till the bears went plop! like furry 
raindrops thudding
-hush! somebody's coming-

onto the floor by the pink night light.
my sister and I swore
later to no witnesses but God

staying up at night to see

all the toys gather secretly their jack in the box surprise
as we kept giggling,  maybe sing song praying
please let stories have no end let toffees stay unwrapped

rather than that...or appear should we go maying

dark cherry in the cordial rhyme
surrounded by chocolate, chocolate!
or the drugstore giant valentine ruby box

satin ribbon sashed we'd eyed,
let that be for Christmas, next time for Mama.
chock full of diamonds

and we'll cash play money,barter
the Golden Delicious stash.

birthdays coming, what will words be then
all corn bread honey and buttered or jam cut neatly
picnic wise, pink lemonade poured all out of doors or

butter cream frosted to the hilt and slice
with a rose on it every minute
and we'll grow up and play the spinet

in dresses of white lawn all stars to wish upon
or take our bikes in the dead of night

to the toy store book shop malt shop combo
we will own
sampling everything making our fortune fortunate,

growing up to live for music, poetry
for pink and green houses, silver thrones
for playing jacks till three on the summer porch...

if we want to...watching the Twilight Zone
and making well thought out
lists of our three wishes, six combined

for when the good fairy chimed by...

(that's why she never came, my sister opined later)

but now she  climbed out of her cot to
practice immediately the toy piano with the
color coded keys, getting ready for Carnegie

that got us into trouble but it was worth it
and we squirreled away more soundlessly then
the french lace in the wedding gown pictures

newspaper snipped on a Sunday, saying
oh orange blossoms,
o what is stephanotis?

till the dawn came up all roseate, roseate

the alarm clock rung
and Grandfather called out "Rise and Shine!"
and it was time for oatmeal

in a lake of cream.
what did you dream our Mama beamed
we said, laughing breathlessly:

stories, the ones we made all up.
till giant rabbits came into our room and gobbled us up
reflecting in the big mirror...

and she believed us, willy nilly.
wouldn't you?
its time for school get your book satchels ready

here's your milk money

Grandmother said in her oriental slippers
matching robe keeping us on the train track.
and if the rain pelted,

saying on our way out:

"You aren't sugar; you won't melt."

mary angela douglas 29 october 2017

The Pure Contradiction

reading the rose rightly as from the first
and petal by petal tracing it in the mind
as on paper with spilt spatter paint

or wearing childhood's frock
and tiny rosebuds embroidered
on the top

with a pink sash she says

and feels like a rosebud too
and this is reading too
the first delight

so that the children dance rosy
ring the rosy round and
all fall down in the rose beds

laughing reading the rose
and later in the book you come across
the War of the Roses, the heraldic rose,

thinking what is that did the armies
throw petals at one another or
why should roses fight

then turning to the allegorical
the Mystical, Rose the rose of
inner light

and Jesus is the Rose
in the Christmas night
and Rilke's rose falls asleep

with her epitaph engraved
after living in so many poems
as in living waters, rose waters,

rose, "oh the pure contradiction
to be no one's sleep" he dreamed

I dreamed she dreamed, they dreamed,
they were-
conjugations of the rose

and reverence before the rose

I understand I have never understood
how may there be sorrow
in a world where roses are.?

mary angela douglas 28 october 2017

The Lives Of The Artists, Certain Others

I dreamed that people underwater
were speaking to those on dry land
what I noticed the most was

how condescending were the people on land
never perceiving 
what a miracle of fortitude it was

that the undersea people
were even still capable of speech at all.
but the fact was,

not only were they speaking,
(literate), as they say, speaking
but they sang arias beside the corals

they painted watercolours
of the undersea kingdoms where they
had been lost for centuries

after the hardtack drifted away
and the sharks had come to stay.

oh my! a little child thought:one day,
they are still alive!

and it was beautiful, beautiful.
but the people on land
congratulated themselves

for managing to stay on land
and gave themselves the great awards.
and honored each other

for dining out regularly
refined in their choice of smorgasbord
and couldn't hear the people

they had thrown overboard.

mary angela douglas 28 october 2017

There On The Other Side

children in antique photographs
are living secret lives
there! on the other side

their looking glass eyes
glint like a moon between trees.
and in a thin disguise,

there, the children pour tea
with their dolls in Victorian dress
or stand before odd window frames

fretful but good at hiding it
uneasy near horsehair parlour sofas
and their forbiddeness.

life goes on even if we'll never

know their names
or understand their games
their sober expressions.

but I am mystified at what is in the frame
they don't seem to be children really.
more like the fairy's changelings.

and I don't think they would answer me
if I said, please can you tell me
if it's Christmas yet

is your dog dead

and did cook's cake fall
in the oven today

and were you sick for a spell
or is it too dingy to tell?

mary angela douglas 27 october 2017

The Day That He Made Birds

I like to think there was a day He said
(to Himself) and maybe a few angels
at their ease

I think I'll make some bright coloured things
with wings, that sing
and then became so enchanted with his

own conception he couldn't stop
and these were birds
that laced the clouds with song

that called to trees
so that the trees yearned to pull up stakes
floating upwards in a green leafed grace

and break into singing too
the kind made of emeralds

mary angela douglas 27 october 2017

You Said I See The River Through The Trees

you said I see the river through the trees
they said there is no river
there is only a creek

when you are little it is hard to make
those distinctions
I see the skies you replied and rose upon rose

and rainbow sherbet layers
where varicoloured angels flock
at sunset casting

the partry favors
colouring the winds

they said oh you pretend
but Grandmother understood
sometimes children see farther.

close reading the pear trees in the story book
to see if they were truly gold.
there is a land I am told

(she smiled)

kenst du das land, you know
the song of citrus and the groves of
let me stay there 

where the inlaid breezes sway
barely ruffling the turquoise of the bay
but that is not to be 

a distant relative at Christmas wrote
thinking you should be more realistic
at that age.

mary angela douglas 26 october 2017

Everywhere Everywhere Christmas

I remember the glorious ubiquity of Christmas wax stencils
in red and green and convincing aerosol snow
even on the storefront glass of the car lots

crepe paper rose red honey combed bells hung from classroom ceilings, the chiming of hand bell carols we played at the assemblies and

department store windows beyond compare
we were glued to the scenes peering into their tableaux vivants
(we thought) of fairy land.

I remember when even wrapping paper in the drugstore

bound in rolls of Christmas sheen signified opulently the
implication unmistakeable of PRESENTS!
we would receive or give, what would they be?

and all that glee from the mystery
at times a candlelit feeling inside

and how I could never make believable bows
from the cardboard spooled ribbon
but no one ever minded. and

brazil nuts cascading out of stockings,
sugarplums in our heads (what were sugarplums)

oranges beyond orange itself and peppermint sticks,
milk chocolate wrapped as golden coins in foil,
in little bags of net

and wondering wondering while flinging
icicles randomly

what will the dolls look like this time
and will they come with extra outfits?
and the excitement of books new minted

rose coloured socks, a Mickey Mouse watch

my Grandfather's face passing out packages
and calling our names like he was
calling us into the Heavenly feast and

our intrepid yet fluffy dog atop the piled high bliss of
unwrapped wrappings, flouncing around in these
as if they were autumn leaves,

the puppy queen of Christmas.

the nativity in the front window
and kneeling near the pine fragrance
under the tree as close as we could be

wanting never to leave

forever and ever
as though we could be Christmas birds
in the boughs, no longer merely children

in the vast and snowy air,
breathing starlight.

mary angela douglas 26 october 2017

Charms

you gave me a thing that was not discernible
the ocean in a thimble
the tolling of arctic bells

beneath the ocean swells

the promise of rose red
the living among the dead
the peacock fan

in the place my soul bowed down.
the public dance
of the humbly proud.

empty words said aloud
and then retracted.
all my heart

redacted.

mary angela douglas 25 october 2017

The Bend In The Road For the Thirteenth Fairy

she could have stayed home
and thrown her own party
perhaps for the neighborhood snails

who are never able to make it on time
and thus receive no invites, not much mail
or a few ladybugs who are always scolded:

get along home, you can see the smoke from here.
she could have played soft music.
voices that never die.

and made her famous fairy biscuits, pie,
fondant light and sweet.
instead.

she turned red as ruby beets
and stormed through the golden streets
turning her pink ribboned wish

to fury.
I wouldn't if I were you
o thirteenth fairy

have spoiled the scene.
you'll look bad in the ballets
from now on

forever in green.

it was thunder storming anyway.
you could have just seen
what was on t.v.

and cut a rug in your taffeta gown
instead of making a scandal in town
you'd never live down.

mary angela douglas 25 october 2017

Where We Live On Tuesdays

where we live on Tuesdays
is where we can't be found
in pink orchards of the Impressionists

where time is standing still
in sentimental sheet music
coloured in apricot and aqua on the cover

and singing in front of the coterie
with a corsage and a lavender dress
before the assembled guests

or the first on the snow covered lawn
communing with antique angels
and then we dream

in Florentine pigments
refreshing the aureoles
lest saints should wear out

their lapis lazuli
I love you truly the scratched photograph
record plays

and mignonette blooms suddenly
in an unfamiliar garden
posies, my Grandmother says

posies will not save the world
yet they are necessary.

mary angela douglas 25 october 2017

One Day I Dreamed Of Those Who Anchored In Clouds

one day I dreamed of those

who anchored in clouds

above the dreaming world

startled into a sleep so deep

by war and wars alarms

but they, a vigil fantastical did keep

oh living tree of language,

where are you now

not in marble nor in bronze

have they laid you to sleep

but in a crueler lapse somehow

I woke in tears remembering

that at your sound and resounding

angels came to take the griefs away

resetting Eden.

where are you now I cried

but there was none fo hear

while like a child without a mother's kiss

in bitter tears  much more

i wept to think:

Poetry. was once like this.

mary angela douglas 24 october 2017

To Welcome Small Travelers

that day I learned the tarantella
both hands together
on the baby grand

was a a day to celebrate
though I was only eight
and imagined a

red rose in my hair
a taffeta skirt
with a certain flair

a peasant blouse 
with puffed out sleeves
and dancing dancing dancing.

with an emerald cummerbund;s 
otherwise known as green
my grandfather laughed

in between scenes...

that was in the music box chimes
when we ate candy drops all the time
lemon and lime and sometimes tangerine

just before Christmas
and the reindeer scene
the nativity in the window set

to welcome small travelers
home.

mary angela douglas 22 october 2017

Waiting To Resume...

keeping the files in order
on the edge of doom
waiting for our

old names to resume
familiar scenes
the ones

wreathed in happiness
the glimpse of heaven
molten through

the threadbare curtains of earth.
the tinged rosiness of
the country dances

and I'm the girl in the dotted swiss with

the merry go round prancing horses
splashed in all colours
and we go around and around

each time glimpsing
home in the near distance
still illuminated,

pastorally speaking.

I go back I return to common
speaking the butter on the table
the substance of glory

or to churn peach ice cream
on a summer porch

or the buttermilk in the
distant Celtic song
of the dairy maid

met by a prince.over a garden fence
do you know this 
and are you cherry trellised too

lost in the morning dews,

i want to ask the people
on the morning train
but they are not the same

and God knows they know
certainly I am not one of them
up to my neck still

with the buttercup gold
that brushes my chin
whenever I think of Him

of God golden in my childhood
and all of us in pale forget me not
whether they will it so 

or not.

mary angela douglas 22 october 2017

Does He Love Even The Dust

Does He love even the dust
from His far kingdoms;
i think he does

and the rings on trees
the petals of the smaller wonders
the slightest breeze

we feel in quieter moments
all these
are His beneficence

to us and cherishing
and I dream
of how it may have been

if we had kept Eden's green.
and dreaming still
my older footsteps turn

upon His turning world
please may I be spared
to learn the span of stars

His heartbeat
under everything.

mary angela douglas 21 october 2017

Grandmother, In The Evening

when you cry and it isn't funny
and then Grandmother plays
her glass record of Pagliacci

and looking back you say
there were so many epic
moments in the yellow kitchen

when she came in momentarily to say
sit straight up in your chairs
so you won't get bad posture

and tomorrow is another day or
to quote Rupert Brooke:
these things have I loved.

with a far away look in her eyes...

like the girl in Our Town
that beatific play
you want to go back 

and stay and stay
and memorize the shadows
in the living room

and resume life back then
practicing the measure
on the piano

From the beginning
go back to the beginning
she'd always say

tuned to your practice
with her piano teacher's ear and
do not fear He will take

care of you
come what may
she sang that lullaby

to you each day
in the old rocking chair
in the room with the rose printed curtains

splashed in fuschia on a cream background
and pale green walls the green of memory
as if we lived inside a rose garden.

and we were the roses...

truly to leave there
was like leaving Paradise
and dusk coming down

as though forever
casting us all in blue..

mary angela douglas  20 october 2017

When Day Was Done

tomato soup is what was planned
and sweet grilled cheese
or deviled ham

the jack in the box at your command
of the startle response with the wand in hand
the dolls well schooled.

we'll scrawl our names in coloured chalk
and be so dainty Easter frocked
and lily gladdened.

when time is still our ocean deep
we'll say our prayers so angels keep
the cupcakes safe for us at home

with the cream filling.
and we played everything every day
and scattered all the toys that way

so Grandmother was heard to say:
who was your servant, this time last year.
which made us wonder

who?

and turn around in the two times two
digressions we always had
after school

on flashcards.flashing
with colouring books reserved for Sundays.
I remember the dusks so blue

the evening colours that seeped through
the snow bright scent of what's to come
our backyard stars

when day was done.

mary angela douglas 20 october 2017

We'll Get Back To You On That

is there any word
we asked the birds
as if we had emerged from

the fairy tale woods
and could understand
all languages

the phrasing of leaves
as in music
the embroideries

of the wind
is there any word
from the disappeared

the disappearing
the ones who willed me to disappear
as though not born

we half sang
in the clearing

and we thought of mountains
of glaciers too
of solar flares

of this great magic trick
which will spell tenure for them
for being on track on point

staying on message of the non messaging back

to faces frozen in the mirror
and then, of mirrors melting
calling out in the last moments:

is there anything anywhere
that can answer even a simple question
where is this or that or who

o yes
with no notes to confess
why on absences from school

they all switched desks

we'll look into it they say
before they bolt the latch.
in case you should come back

and where is the accounting

wrapped in gold
that indicates the bought and sold
the whisper quiet

of those who have no heart
but just continue
as they are

in the working day.
filing it all away.

as though we were in between worlds
or had fallen behind the filing cabinets
as into a vast crevasse

our name extinct on earth.

is there any word, gesture, face
you can possibly unearth
to indicate a human race

a home at least in a photograph fading

that proves
oh, once we were in the census
with the porch light on

and I am the disappeared
I realize after years;
the one purged from the system

the one with no existence

when they answer with insistence
before the local court
and I in plain view

we don't know her

or she or it
and on the record
for the record

by the record
not acknowledging

I am not being acknowledged
by even the least flicker...

so that you yourself are
caught, distraught in the vainglorious vagaries of the world
where close kin choose

to erase you in sworn testimony
as though your were a blotch
on an old school report

cut off at the pass.
not even that.

I bowed my head in contrition
to God who knew, the only Witness true
though I knew no cause for

their ambition
to leave no clue.
and in a mysterious shower of leaves

I was absolved
from being the lost in time
and the last in line

to come up to the window
just as the grating closed
so I couldn't murmur

is there any word
not a single rose,
and do the planets sing
at my removal from the quora
the dress coded choirs

I'm missing from the wire reports
on who oh Lord God
fashioned for us

this bridal ring
of deafening silence
this invisibility cloak

unwished for
and do You, You with me,

Lord God.
feel it too?

mary angela douglas 20 october 2017

About The News

this is the news they say
always proudly.
tune in.

but something in me 
has to say
this is not my news

mine is that one gold leaf
fell today in the forest
wounding a princess

or through a rose cathedral window
light was made happier.
the shade grew roots

branches, flowers
and children played.
silver apples

fell out of their dreams.
everything is not 
what it seems.

that's all i want to say
about the news.

mary angela douglas 20 october 2017

Snow Child, Her Legend

they thought she would always be.
never melting into light.
that April could not hurt her

though they knew she was made of snow;
she was theirs.
their very own.

snow child.
faintly her cheecks of pink glowed
but this was sunset pink

sadly they said to each other later
how could we think
she was already leaving

they cry and they cry
when she'd only
just arrived.

mary angela douglas 20 october 2017

My Ghost, In Cherry Velvet

she will have a rose coverlid my ghost
so that God will know her 
when she appears in The Garden

so that the small birds with flutelike fluttering
will decorate her transparent hand
as if we were in Disneyland

well isn't that Heaven
asked a child in cherry velvet.
It could be I said

and we'll wear dresses the froth
of strawberry ice cream,
wait, I see.

my ghost will have a gem bright
time of it
haunting the people who were a little

diffident in life
polishing their halos
and standing in the light in such a way

that may display
she has come to steal a few scenes back
on the long and the weary track

now turned to pearl...

mary angela douglas 19 october 2017