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