I Cast My Poems Into The Air, Wild Swans

I cast my poems into the air, wild swans
will they wander endlessly
combing the skies of pearl

bereft of home
what theft is this
the moon will say now I am left alone

finding their wings, seared in silver
but they are their own and infinitely
it is my heart and the muffled bells

the updrafts and the excruciating wait
that is their labour and the spell
they cannot break

before the dawn and then
they beat their wings against the sun
and shine o shine in the day undone

wholly gold.
while I their mere messenger weep
and cannot sleep wondering

what will become of them,
my songs

mary angela douglas 26 february 2018

Sometimes

something the trees forgot to say
stayed with me throughout the day
in a pale green whispering.

did the birds leave
with no silver warnings
were they mingled with

the voices of angels
these things I pondered on
while riding the bus

or filing later in the file rooms
of the world
thinking of Aquinas

his angels whirling on pins.
what does it feel like
to be the one sent

with the earth shattering message
to be filled with that much light.
or stooping through an unknown doorway

all gold and ruby with annunciations.
we never talked about this in school
or sitting at the kitchen table.

sometimes I saw a glistening on the walls
when we were all home.
and my Grandfather spoke of the Resurrection

as if it were filled with bird calls
in the Arkansas woods.

mary angela douglas 26 february 2018

The Way It Was Put To Me

the way it was put to me
I could not understand
that they would command

everything in my head
to stand still.
so i stayed the same

and the winged things went with me everywhere
the ones of glitter composed.
the ones they thought

that I had left at home:
the silence of roses
and their effulgence.

the delicate snows.

it was only later
when I was barred from teaching
I saw them clear

for what they were:
and how guarded they were,
how sure

how insistent
on monitoring the gates
so that nothing purely lovely

entered the scene.
no longer was imagination queen
of the May

of of anything.
rhetoric was the order of the day.
and the dried out fossilized who and what you are

under their spectroscopes; labeled in their jars.
then beauty wept in me everywhere
from shrouded star to star.

mary angela douglas 25 february 2018

All That I Can Say

clouds accelerate to rain
and I on the porch of the world again
not their person of means,

practically houseless,
shadowless, dream

how backwards they would wind the clock
to resume the old myths that every time the
weather shifts, it is the old gods arguing

but I will not pray like them to the skies,
nor to the earth, not even to roses
when I know the God of all holiness

is real and Love itself
Christ died to reveal.
Dante said the Love that moves the sun

and the other stars.
the Bible says the one who knows our hearts
better than we know ourselves

each word before we speak;
the one who holds all depths within Him,
the shape of Leviathan. the memory of tears.

why look elsewhere,
I cry to the shining years
to the waning days.

why looke elsewhere
is all that I can say.

mary angela douglas 25 february 2018

It Is Large

it is large.
it was carried too far.
too large for a child's small grasp

too far for the heart at last
and least of all,
but to the heart's detriment

never wrapped in silver starred paper.
o where are the curling ribbons to disguise
as though they were filmy clouds

passing briefly over the sun
the childish hearts undone
by tiny griefs as heavy as lead

even angels cannot find.
or yet, the waking dead
the balm you need.

oh child grown old
still holding onto it,
let go.

and breathe again
the green the irradiant Spring
caryying nothing but a song

for the One who knew you all along.
and carried it all.

mary angela douglas 23 february 2018

We Might As Well

so much we loved the cherry sheen
on the surface of words we heard
at nursery level

then puffed them out in our play
learning the consonants of joy
and sentences when words laid end to end

were the train cars complete.
we would travel then, replete
in lollipop swirls

or flung into the red and taffied day
and hold words on our tongues
at bay like cherry lozenges

bursting to say something, anything
but having to be still by the classroom sill
and fizz not.

fizz not. forget me not.
that's blue and a flower.
and such is the dower of our hours

when with words we play
we might as well wear wreaths of flowers
and be queens of the may.

mary angela douglas 22 february 2018

Mandelstam In Delphenium Twilight, The Painting of The End

the streets there paved with blind pearl
how sure they were I had lost my way
that all my chasms had been cancelled

the Lyceum razed

the door to higher mathematics locked.
the chalkboard filled with the odd phase
scoffed they did at my scuffed shoes

my lightsome tardy ways
the tropical unexpected honey of my phrase;
losing the key to the party, reprobate;

the raspberry fizzing of former days
and the stray dog kicked

and wandering in the carollinian forest
out of place, sans hope:
sensing vast carillions, and the guillotined

at sunset.their angled periscopes.
why will you insist on my ghosthood
when I am opalescent still I wanted to say

but it grew late even trembling;
against my will.

I knew I could find the beautiful
if I just dreamed longer... 
suddenly, a loud noise in the kingdom

and words flew off in a covey
the colojr of sand.
I am not who you think I am

and these are not my wounds
but yours cried I into
the waning day the frosted heart

no longer rhythmic..."I am music...!"
" then God replied, in stars.

mary angela douglas 22 february 2018

Sapphires

am I still here, she wondered
peering into the waters
don't lean too far, her godmother said

or you may drown in clouds
later she left for the ball
dressed in them (the clouds)

and with sudden blue earrings.
sapphires. she whispered to the wind;
is the daylight sky still here

the one I fastened to the earth with tears;
the glint in the arbor;
murmuring, the wishing well spring

or has it broken for joy
into little pieces...

mary angela douglas 20 february 2018

You Don't Have To Know

you don't have to know the distance from the equator
to know that the sun is gold
or that your footsteps fall like petals upon the grass

if you are a real princess.
or the names of flowers
if you are surrounded by their perfumes

or all the names of God
if He calls you, child,
my child.

mary angela douglas 20 february 2018

Into The Unknown Lands

how long ago you fell in love with the grace notes
the patina on the moon
the shadows in the room

of the tree branches in March winds
the small details in the fairy tale
that made you pause, entranced

slippers of crystal or ruby, tiny enhancements
accents in the right place
and on your face the roseate light is blooming

and every afternoon is eternal, looking back
how in the storms the trees were weeping leaves
in ochre and pale yellow gold

cerise diminishments...the going away of clouds.

have I told everything I still don't know
if I could say more than the moire skies;
their silken departures

into the unknown lands.

mary angela douglas 20 february 2018

Songs My Mother Taught Me;Also My Grandmother, Grandfather, The Books On The Turquoise Shelves

I write my name on blank paper
in rounded letters
feeling I am the colour of snow

the glow in the window

at Christmas, home,
knowing the things I know
you will not teach me, you could not teach me

because I learned them there
and I am so happy from the
knowledge that you do not know

despite my snowiness, you will not know
that already I have learned
so many things

the State will not require.
the angel choirs in dreaminess
the way that bells on the wind

will make me feel inspired and that
it is God who summons me then to
the fairy stories glittering

first in English in my head
the chrism of that
you will deny

because you learned as teachers
fairy stories are suspect now
in the space age

quiet children must be watched

too late I would have said
if I had known
with airy delight

I am already theirs
and they are mine
the beautiful things

and I am delighted now
that God arranged it so finely
that I should know what I know

from those who loved me best
and did not put me to the test
and write my name on God's

great golden scroll
even as I grow older, seemingly,
in cursive writing starlit still,

joy filled in the secret told.

mary angela douglas 18 february 2018

For Those In Their Vast Slumber

we'll make thimbleberry jam
and sing to sleep under a juniper moon
those who came too early

those who left too soon
weaving from prairie grasses
the cradle for their return

the ships to traverse
the seashell silence of mermaids

binding with a rainbow thread
the great wound of the skies
over us

until the deep snow flies
covering the red clover.

mary angela douglas 17 february 2018

They Snatched Beauty Out Of The Air

they snatched beauty out of the air
and rose above the world despair
their own cinderella lives in tatters

no coach approaching on the jeweled road

I wonder how they dreamed
and made the dream enlarge beyond all
common, miserable matters

until it eclipsed almost completely

the penury they endured,
the utter obscurity
did God in a whispered word sustain them

and walking out of pocket on the avenues
did mysterious flower laden trees
fling down their blossoms continuously before them

that they should be the Kings of spring

so that they knew Someone knew
and told the angels what they were doing
at what cost

and led all the hidden graces
to their decrepit doorways
and made them believe

against the preponderance of evidence
their beleaguered lives accumulated

they were the chosen to endure, to claim even
one lost lovely word or image
true knights forever unheralded, if need be,

in search
of the beautiful, the unmitigated grail.

mary angela douglas 16 february 2018

The Thing You Find At The Bottom Of The Pile

the key to fairyland
your one way ticket expired to the village of creampuffs (sorry carl sandburg)
the professional's guide to psychic picks for the great race tracks of the world, guaranteed (1925-1972)
your family doctor's excuse to stay home from school during the Shirley Temple film TV Marathon
plus his prescription for malteds and lollypops and chocolate covered anythings.galore.
your great grandmother's triple juice recipie for combatting the flu
your 1958 F.A.O. Christmas Toy Catalog with circled items reposted to Santa Claus
your certificate for free ice cream for life from Howard Johnson's with the original 28 flavor menu
your diamond plated Mickey Mouse Club Ears
the original map from 1849 to all the goldmines out West
some vintage crystal slippers only slightly scratched
ditto with the magic wand...
enough S&H green stamps to purchase a Cape Cod cottage complete with chintz covered furniture.
the magic fishbone...darn it. I knew it had to be in here somewhere.
the cat that choked on half of the magic fishbone.

Green And White

imagine the greenest place
and you'll go there
every time you close your eyes

and you will feel so cooled
by the green winds
and the cherry lime surprise

and wade in the green water

and sunbeams through the trees
will whisper emeralds, emeralds.
you will drink in green

green Time
and be quenched and breathe, breathe
green so deeply until you are clearly filled

with the sparkliness of it all,
the April facets
and to yourself you will hum

a festive green song
at the behest of angels
that wlll cause everything sweetly, serenely

to break into small white flowers

mary angela douglas 14 february 2018

I Think Of Monumental Beauty Often

I think of monumental beauty often
of the rise and fall of cloud civilizations
the pink orange folds of the

drifting sheep and who will corral them in my sleep
my thoughts in the red clover meadows grazing
near the clouded over Andromedas

while the school films drone on

I think of the histories of small pools reflective of
the cloud empires and how I want to live in
their green blue world

as though it could be a second and an emerald birth
with art deco sapphire accents
into coolness rippling out from the center

of small mirrors

where would I be today if I had studied assiduously
dates, treaties, the names of kings
I don't know

I remember swinging almost to the edge of clouds
their vast embroidered cities of loveliness tinted
like the earliest paintings of the Renaissance

then disappearing as if the skies
were one vast pearl.


mary angela douglas 13 february 2018

Taproot

they thought I was blind music
in my summer cathedrals
amid the pink and the green

of odd water coloured days
or was I white rains on
the crackled pavements

the dissonant flute
at their epic parades
with not much to say;

pastel as ice creams
uncertain as a sigh.
I was the fern imprinted

on small stones
who loved cool hollows
and being alone.

the hollowed out earth
the coolness,
the canopy of leaves.

and peach starred fairy stories.
any breeze
in between shadows of the pressed flowers;

the mist of small waterfalls for hours
and more than these, the morning glories,
the rainbows of the semiprecious.

jewelry lent by God.

you said standing in her dream
how can she stand at all
where the moss is slippery

and she might fall into the streams;
who would see her? strange fish,
a mere ghost on unruled paper.

they turned laughing away at this
as if they owned the sunshine gold.
held daisy chain sway.

but I remember those summers,
that they were indelible.
my soul piled high with white violets.

mary angela douglas 13 february 2018

Read This Poem

read this poem in the language of snow
your last thought as you turn to go
read it in silence

becoming yourself the syllables of a silence
no one owns
read it in all colours

or as apple tree shade
as if it were transparent or
the last call made between God and ourselves

as if it were the last pear shining
in the orchard of the skies
read it and tell no lies.

read it in transitory gleams
read it as if you were breathing flowers
read it as you would be read to

as a child, floating on a stream of, is this possible?
read it and bring on the milder weather
let your heart think evenly silverly

so our boats do not tip over
on the lake of dreams.

mary angela douglas 13 february 2018

Think Of A Moment Perfectly Still

think of a moment perfectly still
like the golden apples on the crystal hill
before they roll down

before the knights entered the fray
the cloudless wonder of a lapiz blue day
o it's a world of crystal

and you put yourself inside
and you keep still, o very still
like the moment before snowfall

before spring buds appear
and in this stillness, in any given year
the healing angel nears

to trouble the waters.
with fresh colours
to soothe with new music

mary angela douglas 12 february 2018

When Did You Make This

long did they wear a fine iridescence
committed to be that music,
not merely to play it

theirs was the winter sun
the radiances glinting off the snow hills.
the unbearable distances from home

I cannot calculate a crystalline circumference,
the trajectory they were on
crafting from indifference, spite and calumny

their hidden Atlantis.in the dark part of the sun.
soon will come the last and silver trumpets
the velvet of their nights slip far away

the chrysalis built in their demeaned days
and this then the whole crux of their ballet:
the soul in its intricate sequinning displayed.

when did you make this marveling angels queried
caught in the toiling of your days:
under the clocks of the diffident
and along the mocking quays.

mary angela douglas 10 february 2018

I Remembered Spanish Music

I remembered Spanish music
rubied thread through an emerald jungle
a bird singing in another language

a lost bird singing
a rubied thread in its beak
is skimming over emerald jungles

and through the thickets of sleep
and it is singing one note
and the word is always

forlorn some kind of sarabande

and it carries the burden with wings
of so many notes spilling down
a crystal sound breaking apart into flechas

over the vast unknowable continents
of the heart.

mary angela douglas 10 february 2018

We Would Have Gone On Living

the moon would be listening to the lemon flower song
or would it be the other way round
and we would wear dresses of willow green

and stand by the willows and slip smooth stones into the waters
this would go into an art song and we would hang our harps there

or be translated into all the 500 words for snow
because eventually of course the pale petals would start raining down
as they always do when I am thinking about another world

where peace would have flowered
and we would have gone on living.

mary angela douglas 10 february 2018

Oranges, Lemons On The Way To St. Ives

oranges lemons I cried in my sleep
and will it be on the way to St. ives
I will catch the spring rains in a summer glass

and the fever will subside
lemons oranges is it too late
and fruit that is chilled in a hardscrabble room

or I will drink orangeade under the moon
and the neighbors will not yell in the hall
in syllables that mean nothing at all

turning my face to a crystal wall
no longer fitful.

and I will wash Christ with limewater bells
and line with gold the linoleum floor
that the children may not cry anymore.

lemons oranges
fairy water in the wells

mary angela douglas 9 february 2018


Note: The poem was written after being sick for a few weeks. I was actually asleep when I first started writing it today in my dream. I had the words oranges and lemons and was trying to put something in it about spring but in the dream I also wanted to put a faint pink light in it. and in the dream i was peeling clementines and lemons only the lemons were the same shape as the clementines. and i was trying to decide how many of each like in some childhood early math problem. i knew in the dream and eve nwehn i woke up that i was thinking of judy collins singing the bells of rhymney and later after i thought about it realized i had combined a little two english nursery rhymes and then the rest of it just turned out the way it did. but i was sitting down writing it in my dream. it has happened to be several times that i started working on a poem in my sleep or that the poem even in final forms the threads of it appeared to be just as i was waking up. this is the first time i physically sat down in the dream and wrote or began to work out the poem on paper and it has been years since i wrote a poem on a piece of paper as i always compose on the computer now. anyway i just wanted to remember this for later so I wrote it here.

Once It Was Crystal

once it was crystal
and the morning clear
once it was chirping

and all held dear
and the dolls dropped to sleep
or on their heads

the rhinestone's flash
in the everywhere
and we were just starting then.

how much I need now the let's pretend
now as I tread the world of sin
when laughing's the easiest thing to do

at anyone's heart just breaking in two
but we with red paper and old school glue
could mend it all if we knew how to

and cradle the dollies and somersalt bears
and rescue the earth from all its cares
and round up the scoundrels and make them pay

for taking our summers forever away.

mary angela douglas 8 february 2018

I Am Displaced Not

I am displaced
not in the country of grace
and I will find it somewhere

beyond the cast off wrappings ribbons
remnants of the feasts
to which I received on no silver platter

on no monogrammed embellished invitation
one hello
I am just taking notes

so that I remember
whose lawn not to trample
and to admire

as though in a dream
vast landscapes I do not own
I do not own

yet on any city bus that lets me ride
I can glide right by
and free of charge

to see the flowers in the yards
the monumental flowers
and they sing out to me

in overwatered colours
take us with you
we are the flowers of dream

mary angela douglas 8 february 2018

Hunting The Wendy Bird

high in the peaks of the undiscoverable
she will not fall from flight
nor her shadow be marred

in the blue starred twiilghts
or blister in the violet slated sun.
though hunters one by one

pluck out the streetlights
dreamlights harplights
what harm will come

from her guileless confessions

already she is a dream,
dismissed as a child
from late lessons.

mary angela douglas 7 february 2018

Far Away Is Never Again

far away is never again
said a little child
to the evening wind
and the blue wind cried

and we saw the garden
where rose petals died
but there was still perfume

from every side

what did we know of dying
when the moon came

still the same
and candy cane Decembers
the rick rack kitchen shelf paper

the same neighbors.
how many worlds can vanish in one
but then by then

we'd only begun
and ours was the moon and the stars and the sun
and you yourself know how the bell is rung

every time at the school room door
the honeyed shadows across the floor
though the schoolroom itself

isn't there anymore

mary angela douglas 7 february 2018

Winning

I looked for the mirror,it didn't shine
I looked at the clock but it wasn't time
i feet my heart is winding down

somewhere velvet with no sound
I made a music born to last
but that was long before I knew

that there was frost upon the grass
and all I look for still is lost
and I'm lost too from

sphere to sphere
longing for the winning year.

mary angela douglas 7 february 2018

The Soul and The Deputized Assesor

ah how long have I longed for my rest
strummed the soul with little breath for song
having been tested and retested all summer long

on the names of days,if I can subtract in my head
counting backwards repeating what you said
in bad grammar 15 minutes ago

if I can identify the colour red the petaled snows
in myriad shades if you are referring to the Rose

I said though I know that you are not
you have the forms to fill out
on the competency of the soul

can the soul still live on its own
you want to measure and censure and censure again
and have caught me on a whim
because my neighbor called me in
and here I am

in your stable of lets pretend protocols
for codifying everything by its behavior
when it is ripped from home
by no will of its own

and marking it stay or go with a tiny question mark
noting its quickness in snapping to

when you enter the room in white coats
if only you could see how bright the soul is
how many lumens would out illumine you

but you're not into mysticism
in fact that's another box you mark

in red since the subject came up
and you wrote more rapidly something
so I endure, being the soul,

what else is a soul for
getting bored with the patterns on the floor
you with your pinprick eyes that register nothing

who think that fate is a job

you have no idea
how long I can outwait you.

mary angela douglas 6 february 2018

Still On Earth

a golden door is shaken in the wind
letting out what it will not let in.
it happens in a blink
so others think perhaps it

didn't really happen.
but the heart struck know.
they always know.

the silver bowl is passed
but skips at them
no mention made

and table talk goes on.
time shifts
suddenly you are old

I'm still on earth you say softly
but my heart is in Heaven.

mary angela douglas 6 february 2018

Time Strayed Off In Cherry Brocades

time travels too I dreamed, we dreamed
in a golden carriage marriage of earth and skies
and the bent wheels flying

off, the horses lurching shining the sea lanes,
drifting the passersby
we loved its raveling cherry brocade

and woke too soon the moons beyond our grasp
in the looking glass while the pasts strayed home
the bride adjusting the flowerstitched hem

and music flows under ground never heard from again
no no you chme it must return the children having learned
all lessons well and breaking forever

the evil spell.

mary angela douglas3 february2018

The Beautiful Page In Its Snowing I Beheld

the beautiful page in its snowing I beheld
the ink in its descriptive hand
and this was in praise of stars

of the heart's coronations
the fleeting sunrise
our faces cast in pink shadows

or the sketchbook with triumphal lilies
the children annotated in May flowers
the book of hours never as random

as it's now supposed
the opening of rose on rose

and the sudden psalms
embellished in the psalters of
our going on.

mary angela douglas 2 february 2018

Cezanne At The Close Of The Day

there is a yellow house

a yellow house lodged

lodged among trees

and the trees are spackled

and they are dappled

though the house is not

the sky an intensification of blue

I want to go inside that house

with its view of spackled trees

and all the greens are far away

and yet they are close to me.

in that house I will dream of God

as in all other houses I have done

but this time I will dream so much

a ladder of leaves, beyond disease

will appear and it will be clear to me

when to go

to go up the ladder of leaves

to be lighter than leaves to proceed

so that this will be possible:

to disappear into the blue

the intensification of blue

and still to keep singing,

though out of view.

mary angela douglas 2 february 2018

The White Ship On The Waters Of Braille (Second Version)

the allusive ship, the white ship vanishing
into mists, or onto the canvas
where the artist is disappearing

into a cameo frame

or the haunting of our years
the ship down, the treasure
never found

the jewels transposed into light
and the passengers with them.
in childhood, the ship that

sparkled on the waters,
the waters of dream
ah! the white ship

and you are lulled,
thinking you are there
or is it, as is often the case

the moonlight sheer, and sure,
the ship made of moonbeams
your mother sings of

and now in the harbor, the white
ship, is it the same one there
and you hear it when sleep is fugitive

and the sound of oars or something silvered

or is it the ship of diamond and evanescent snows
half buried in winters long ago
foundering at the Poles

or the ship that bore Arthur away
that tragic king
three lilies in his hands

so brief a reignon the wide white waters
on the violet waters pale.

mary angela douglas 9 august 2016;rev. 1 february 2018