I Am Writing This To Invisible God

for the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

and to God, to Christ our separate adorations
on the Feast of Epiphany

I am writing this to Invisible God
whom I know to be there
and I know His invisibility is

a fairy tale test of my love to see if I will care
if other's mock my love
for Someone who can't be seen

who must then be a figment of
my imagination or my delusion.
Beautiful delusion I cry! Do

not leave me you who never call
editing anything but murder.
oh may I publish aloud the freedom

I feel in speaking with You
even in secret though why that is
necessary is only because

if I speak to you in public
they will think I am only
speaking to myself

or trying to own the State
I know that I am not.
I do know the difference.

I know you will not mock my poems
to you and they are all to you and
they float free because You are

above this bright deluded world bending ah
as your friend Mr. Hopkins noted
and oh, as he said I murmur, echoing too

both the golden and the leaden
with slight amendment
all is indeed now gashed gold and vermillion

only wounded.
The Word is wounded and my words too;
the snow falling, the breeze the freeze

everything they want to commandeer.
Oh My Dear, gashed as you were
you are and will be

we will not let this happen
without making a sound.

mary angela douglas 6 january 2018