Crystal

you in your crystal of dreaming
forage for every facet of light
beyond the lattice work of seeming

repairing the jeweled and the scattered nights
tuned to a finer tuning as the Magi take flight
warned by the web of dreams that quavers,

the disappearance of gleams and the Saviour:
depart o depart another way.
how can I say what is necessary

speaking only a childish language
not making myself known:
find the way to come home

you wonder from day to day;
unable to flee what is given.
so you dream on.

thus snow comes to be
and scatters her petals endlessly
over the glaciers 

of a fitful world.

mary angela douglas 30 november 2017

As If You Were Born In The Snow Queen's Mirror

as if you were born in the Snow Queen's mirror
you will grow up to astonish the world
and they will thank you for letting them know:

only puzzles matter, and solving them for the undertow
so that you know that you know you know
you are the brightest bulb in the room

the room being what used to be called a universe
and now is something larger
devoted to kicking out the smaller planets

you'll say to them merely:
we have to let you go.

larger and larger like a hot balloon

your world will flourish with a slide rule smugness.
while those of us defunct stay at home
and toast our toast by the grate

and still can't wait to reread Great Expcctations
or all the greats.you think of as taboo
because greatness is offensive.

you don't even have picture puzzles stuffed into

your children's stockings at Christmas
I would have sniffed had I known your kind earlier.
You who made poetry into a grid

for the accessibly accessible.
never mind said the voice of all roses
in my head,

the saint of words.like prayers
not to be exploited in the overly public square.
in heaven their music is allowed

their opulence, the Crown.

and overinflated numbers crowd in
jowl to jowl.

mary angela douglas 28 november 2017

On First Reading Dante's Paradiso

ON FIRST READING DANTE'S PARADISO

I used to wonder: did he write this from a kind of goldenness
that welled up in him the way tears well up in others
and there I was in the collegiate sunshine reading blinding gold.

to anyone else it would seem I was quiet there
with my bookstore paperback copy of The Paradiso

in the Ciardi translation

on my own as we had no course on Dante then..

the walls dissolved around me and I was stunned

at the flights of such language the architecture

of it in a kind of vertigo

of dizzying light echoed and reechoed 

like a honey accrued outside of time

 
and there were divine suns everywhere

a multifaceted design
catching the woods on fire and beyond the perimeter

of our small school and the St. Louis sun made obeisance
to the several ones and then disappeared
and there was soaring as in the Icarian mode and yet redeemed

and music falling through several atmospheres
while we moved from star to star in the Immovable
the Only True Heart

and if anyone had come up to me in the student cafe

and asked, do you forget where you are when you read
after a dazed moment I would have answered: yes.
you cannot imagine how much.

mary angela douglas 27 november 2017;16 may 2024

Living Should Be That Way

we seemed to dream the days away
living should be that way we thought
when we thought at all

our thoughts like clouds.
like clouds the wind lifted the snows
as though it would always be

in our backyard the same
glistening, our cheeks rose with cold.
why is it at the time it seems the

moment cannot die away in gleams and
that it will always be Christmas
and a Christmas sky above us

the evergreen expectancies.
never the candles burning low.
we were dreaming then I know

into the coloured lights

the straw roof of the manger
and the crowning star
dressed as angels when

with cardboard wings

spray painted gold
by our Grandfather.
we would enter the vestibule

so velvetly.

mary angela douglas 27 november 2017

Sometimes In The Heart Of Living Things

sometimes in the heart of living things,there's
a wish to be ferried across the violet waters
to plant our small flags in the vicinity of stars...

gliding to harp strings elliptical 
when you aren't the only one
to whom the angels cry:

you don't know who you are.

sometimes the soul slips out of sight
a silver ship on a vanishing horizon
and you rub your eyes

not believing what you see.
will the angels come for me
my little sister whispered terrified

at Christmas tide
when she heard the heralding song
not yet I said

filling her hands with tangerines
as bright as suns;
not yet, till Kingdom come

will you lean like Roses lean
out of our backyard,
pink petaled, gone some otherwhere

outside Time's slipstream.
and it won't be hard.

mary angela douglas 24 november 2017

The One All The Caroling Was For

can I help it that I want to read books
where children eat bowlfuls of raspberries
with bavarian cream

in sweet little bowls with a  pale green glaze
and under the trees in a matching shade
and where there is just enough breeze

to make the summer, Spring
can I help it if in a once upon a dream
I manage to go back there

in the pastel tinted train and ticketless
that used to run round the park
oh never deliver me

from the firefly dark again
or from lingering at the table
over the perfection of Neapolitan ice cream

chocolate, vanilla and strawberry
all at the same time.
from the chime of the xylophone

at the school assembly they let me play
and tambourines and folkloric dance costumes
sewed by our mothers.

some things should stay
like thick snow skies the school week before Christmas
and the inexpressibility of sparkling and reverence

comingled in the air
about us everywhere,
the love of home

the deep inhalations of the fir trees
and even alone
the stained glassed feelings

the Christmas lights in brilliant shades
resembling the Renaissance at its apex.
crowned with angel or star

and the baby Jesus we loved in the small window creche
like he was our own shy little brother
the one all the caroling was for.

mary angela douglas 21 novemer 2017

Far Off I Heard An Elfin Music

far off I heard an elfin music

a teletype of snails the stitching of sea shells
far off I heard the bird called Forever,
falling from its perch and then or

as if the drowned cathedral emerged from the lake
the bells slowly mending and clearer now
and this is coming back to life somehow

the ghost leaves murmured and the
winds from their caves of blue diamonds.
I wrote with red pencil stubs on tablets of clay

reed drawn the living waters
and skated over time, over a crust of ice
falling into the wave

it was cold like the night of shipwreck,
unremitting as stars
and the bell tolled and I translated it

oh I tried

are there any survivors I cried?
but that was when
old continents drifted apart

what is art I was asked
how could I answer bound to my task
as Ulysses to the mast

as Penelope at home weaving and leaving it out
of the letters never to be finished
it may be love to listen this way

and night and day to write it down

I tied the nosegays of the bridesmaid Past
and said oh God this once may it last,
the fleeting sparkles on the ballroom floor

the organza and the starry conservatory word
spoken under moonlight never returning
war widowed, weary, yearning

the shadow tracing went on and
silver falling on an unwritten page,
the ink of tears

aren't you a regional poet they sneered:
if eternity is A on the map, and after that
or a scrap of

paper flown out the window

the dust of years like sifted gold.
perhaps, this glistened.
I only listened.

mary angela douglas 20 november 2017

As We Did At The First

lately my poems turn mauve in a mist and are gone
why prolong the song when it is sad
my angels say and will not

to magnify the sound.
heaven is within when
it is not around

a lingering radiance infers
and something stirs and wants
to turn into flowers

if only it could.

snow petals the avenues of dreams
and I cannot wake
that should all spinning wheels forsake

yet I am bound to this
and must repeat sense without meaning
birthdays without cake

the metrical measure I cannot learn.
because it is not my heart.

Dear Lord deliver me from words that fail
as flowers fail
in an early frost

and children are lost in the woods
folklorically.and must save thenselves,
I want to see the stars again

as we did at the first.

mary angela douglas  19 november 2017

To the Poets of the First War, An Epitaph

[for Rupert Brooke]

they wanted to win so much
the Golden Fleece for their generation
the trellised rose and more

for rhe fair lady and in verse
the mystical intonations of
the waved shores lapping.

for this they gathered all their wit,
good cheer, the fables of the years
and marshaled all their soul

fit to a singular radiance

and trained themselves so secretly
from valorous study shelf to shelf to meet
life with their version of

the chivalric codes.
then lost, lost, all lost
to the call of a dubious war

a generation lost and Poetry
lies dying in a trench the blood flow unstoppable
and even now bears the wounds

not yet, the scars, of the
hemorrhaging rose of their hearts

the letter left unsaid.

and the sweet heart moon,
lacking the old compliments
is blanched

and over their silent tombs

cannot depart.

mary angela douglas 17 november 2017

Incoming Weather

what have you forgotten that you used to know
did you ask blue windowpanes
snows have drifted through the night

dream noting the flight of drifting birds
are you their current have you heard
sad angels ask

being somewhat far from home
their weathervanes in a whirl

small diamonds rage and is this snow blindness
your prisoners ask you in the freeze
the orange groves lost

but its all on a need to know basis.
if you see in the middle or on either side
the optometric slides

presenting to you the view or what's left of it.
this is where visions died the marker says
but the snows cover it all.

mary angela douglas  17 november 2017

I Will Be A Diamond

I will write on the wind in invisible ink
cutting the foil stars out of the sky
making the paper snowflake chains

for the evergreens to which the bright birds fly
and gilding the pinecones
I will remember my first homes

and it will become so real
it will be all I feel and
Christmas to the fingertips

you will say how did she get that way
so that she doesn't know where she is
what day

if you say anything at all

you will say so small how would anyone notice
if she left the room
you will mean

if I leave the world
but oh, in the hand of God
I will be a diamond.

mary angela douglas 16 november 2017

What To Do When The Trail Disappears

sit down and eat the last of the gingerbread.
watch the map grow wings and rise up into the clouds.
set your watch.
sing lullabies to the leaves.
take the white pebbles out of your shoes
wash them in the stream
make an altar
I remember you Bethel
I remember you Lord God
how often you showed me the way
I am lost so lost even my shadow is misplaced
no one is coming to look for me
except the angels
and written in gold:
I will see You soon.

mary angela douglas 16 november 2017

Someday Redux 1950s

I want to live in candy box pictures
maybe old valentines
and live on lemon drops

tootsie roll pops
pop soap bubbles
with a golden pin

and play the record again
the way I played it then
the nursery sing a long song

when the world could hold no wrong
but the throng singing
cobbler, cobbler mend my shoe

this won't do said alice
frowning in a gown of Alice Blue
you've got to grow up, not down

but we sang all the way to town
we're going to buy ribbons
and lilac perfume

and someday man
will go to the moon

mary angela douglas 16 november 201

The One With The Patio

in my dream there is a baby
i try to pick the baby up
but it's heavy as a mountain

the baby
the way children can be
when they don't want to leave

they don't want to be picked up
picked up and deposited 
like trash on the sidewalk

cut the grass
before the historical society
faints from the eyesore of it

being  two inches longer than
is allowed
the baby is loud

it thunders like Paul Bunyan
the legendary baby
and blue oxen come to graze

in my veritable backyard
or did I get the unit
with the patio

it's not that clear
it's hard to remember
remember, it's still a dream

there is no baby

there is no backyard
there's miniblinds
and a sky stained like

raspberries crushed
and then I'm on the bus
going to work

it's temporary again

my daydream folds into a desert
the living desert
while all the flowers bloom

at the same time.

mary angela douglas 16 november 2017

We Watch The Monsters File Below

we watch the monsters file below
from all our towers made of snow
and know what we know.

the Sovereign God our keeper is
the watcher o'er the sleepers Is
and all the bubble and the fizz

of life means nothing here
where those once friends
can disappear

into the mire down below
we tearless watch
from towers of snow.

mary angela douglas 15 november 2017

Angel Voices

"Fled is that music;do I wake or sleep?"
John Keats

I did see the saints and they were gathered
as the song says and I would be
forever singing that song

by the river Beautiful
in their white robes
snowier than snow

and with gold tinsel
around their waists
the kind we wore as children

in the Christmas pageants,
American primitive
early American primitive, silken

whispered the angel docents in the dream
isn't it lovely
yes I said as it is well with my soul

like a bell intoning: well.
how deep the wells of music are
when sung to the Lord but

primitively as us in our gay gowns
as Grandmother Moses remembered
all red and green and flat paint and

busy is the scene and the fields are ripe
and I sing apple orchards apple orchards
and reach to gather them

as though they were made of gold
those apples
then I wake up to

voices yelling in the hallway
in a concrete fortress, edge of town
and the voices echo as they always will

oh candle burning down, my soul,
the jangling of tears and fears crystallized

in the pit of my stomach like
milk blue mornings before school it's deja vu
the coriander fragrance of the bed bugs

a sense of je ne se quoi, the richer inhabitants
willing us all away
and where are the angel voices fled

I sob.
are they stilled?

mary angela douglas `15 november 2017
WINSTON SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA

We May Be Falling Into The Light

we may be falling into the Light
though bit by bit, and slowly
waxing our wings by candles bright

while the dragon seas are foaming.
ah but another Rose bloomed
in the tune, the tune

that hums in the soul
half turning
and wise men came

through the wilderness then
with a dark and a purple yearning.
how modern they are

not to seek the Star
those in the current age maintain
but I am lost and so dream tossed

to follow naught else
but the olden way.
and I could swear

down a crystal stair
of starlight twice blessed and holy
that Christ who came

though now unnamed
is waiting still to show me
on a bed of straw

in a stable grim
that God's come down to earth again
and nothing can forestall Him.

mary angela douglas 14 november 2017

There Must Be Something

there must be something else beyond
all these petty fiefdoms
the consensus of their

pooling suns
when the days have melted down again
into their zero sums

the soul said wondering
but not aloud

it's not allowed.
you will sit down
and wait your turn

till the well heeled healers have returned
have finished their feasting
and serving the leasing

who rake it all in
whether town or gown.
why pretend otherwise..

we weren't born to be
cynical.
bur there are too many clues.

most of them, not on the news.

I do believe
in the something beyond
that can rightly be called

Kingdom.
and Free One.
and thus, oh my sad heart revived

your continual unknown festivity goes on.

mary angela douglas 14 november 2017

Falling Away

is anyone here real the prisoners ask themselves
the ones kicked out of their cells
and abandoned to further abandonment

trying to recall
how many circles in hell
are there exactly and

have we reached rock bottom yet

look into the bright mirror and breathe
the angels sigh
the ones still there

but you stare into a vacantness
comprehended by only God.
build another world inside you

old dissidents advised
still holding onto time
and the dissonance in Shoshtakovich.

and you comply.
peering into the Beautiful,
falling away.

mary angela douglas 13 november 2017

We Would Give Everything We Have

we would give everything we have
and not look back
just to find somehow

we were stumbling down the same
track as you, and you up ahead
in the purple dusk

still seeking what was lost
what was lost
my God

we all are born to find
to live and then move on
from what we cherished most

oh Father
Son
and Holy Ghost

what else can we know in the world
but you
what else could we care to.

mary angela douglas 12 november 2017

Things You Might Need To Know You Will Never Know

people can say one thing
and mean ten others
in an opposite direction

if you ask for directions
you will owe someone something
somewhere

sometimes it's better to remain lost
the cost of being different
when you could choose otherwise

gets higher and higher
but will you still recognize
your own name when it is called

after all, this world is temporary
what you thought when you were small
might be the most true of all

even better than
refrigerator drawings

hope is not a tinsel star
but sometimes it makes you feel shiny.

mary angela douglas 11 november 2017

Ave, Avion

maybe their angels are deceased
the playground bullies grown a little older
scoffed and talked too much

of their largesse at all the reunions

and we in our scuffed shoes
our bartered dress
looked at the moon through clouds

while they scoffed on interminably loud
how can they be

cherished of God
the cherisher of sparrows flown
oh don't look down

still the ice is on your wings
and other woundings come
while you're still on the ground

don't make a sound that they can overhear
from year to ridiculed year
or music itself will splinter

and be scattered far from here
o fare thee well and etc.

only the jewels of suppressed tears
on the ever encroaching webs will shine.
but we said no and rose with broken wings

against the current of the times,
the current of the times

ave maria.
dona nobis

flight

mary angela douglas 11 november 2017

Why Did The Cardinal Red

why did the cardinal red in the snow
make us so happy
and the holly berries glow

glazed over in brilliant sunlight,
so dazzle and diamond star.


the strings of coloured lights
like tulip bulbs hauled down
from the creaking attic

everytime by a careful Grandfather

made our hearts shine
these things do not
diminish with time

or crackle around the edges
but ever, evergreen intensify
and not like wrappings cast aside

the doll bride presides
at the wedding feast
over the glaced fruit and nog

and books and toys
and all agog at

the stocking homemade surprise
blue ribboned and violet sprigged,,
a dress for Spring, surmised

more than a reverie sugarplum coated over.
all of it remains, sustains
in Heaven's gilt disguise.

like the wandering Star
within the orphaned mind
still come to rest-

before adoring eyes.

mary angela douglas 10 november 2017

Let Silence Break Open

let silence break open
as into a jewel inlaid cabinet
where the moon and the sun

are mother of pearl
against jet ebony shining or
as into a garden of spices

where all the buds had
bloomed in the snows
and you stopped by

like the merchant on shipwrecked holiday
seeking souvenirs for his daughters
and one bright rose

and found and here the storyline drifts
unexpectedly, not a world of trouble
but a theme composed

upon which exotic birds settled
the ones brought back to emperrors
so that the suitors not lose their lives

and all the riddles come due
at once
and death, comprise.

mary angela douglas 10 november 2017

This Was One Of Several Songs

this was one of several songs
a girl stood among grasses
in blue skirts

in a wind of perfumed stars
it seemed eternal
it was only a moment.

second song.
in a golden orchard the pears
fell like rain

a child tried to explain it
buttering her bread with difficulty

at the dinner table
and was understood.

song three.
this has not come to pass.
music filled the earth/
all wounds fled.

mary angela douglas 10 november 2017

Carol Of The Snowblind

snowblind they wandered a long, long time
glazed as the kingdoms of don't look behind
in the precints of the in between

the crevasse is always open.

green said the stoplight
but not for them
the merry clash of bells

in the winter prime.
the gift wrap glint
and the angel chime

the gingered peaches
the sugared rinds

snowblind and on and on
the story of let them-

be gone.
not in our town
the derelict wronged

stage managed from porch to porch
not with the nightlight on.
and the great feasts toasted their own.

jesu who came in the dead of night
you alone can feel the plight
of those who wander when it's bright

for those who shun them.
you alone outrun them.

mary angela douglas 9 november 2017

As Men Panned For Gold

i saw the Soul at rest
and all turmoil had faded
from its East and West

and in its North and South
no battle raged.
I saw it suspended 

like a chyrsalis
and alive in only this
and nothing else mattered.

and it was occupied
as with distant colours or
the winds 

from great distances
and filtered itself through starlight and silt
as men on earth

panned for gold.
who can hold the Soul
back from what it is to be

something asked me
silverly.
I had no answer.

where answers had ceased.

mary angela douglas 9 november 2017

Thus, The Miller's Daughter

no job description covers
everything expected of you
thus, The Miller's Daughter.

do you really think
it was only the straw
turned into gold

in the cold tower
barely furnished?
I envy you

your simplicity.
before the day was through
she had to mend

the pearl of clouds already dissolving
and wash the floor with morning dew
in the heat of afternoon

when it had long vanished.
and make the jam for tea
when she was famished;

when it was said:

let it be raspberry, you-
or rather, instead, mint jelly
and this, in January

when fruited bush and mint leaf slept
under deep snows.
who knows what she endured

and even if they do I am that sure
she could not turn her name to gold
her flats to crystal shoes

since the deal was
"you shall remain nameless."
be here tomorrow

by two.

mary angela douglas 8 november 2017