How Beautiful They Stand

how beautiful they stand
like ships beyond command
above forgotten lands

the clouds
and I am one composed
of the same clouds

or, I dreamed it so
being the dream child
in the glass

of the fairy tale winds
surpassing.
oh what will I see when I look last

and will these kingdoms come to pass
in the mirror they will offer me
above the vast the final seas

or will I vanish into these
murmured the sea maid as she shone
till the indigo waves closed over.

mary angela douglas 31 march 2018

Paper Airplanes

we made paper airplanes
unlike Leonardo's flying machine
they flew near the ceiling

with no frescoes
but we were happier there
when the moonlight streamed in

I'm not precocious
they told my friends
what I was I am

a girl with no plan
but does it really matter
only God matters

if only we can reflect
one fleck of Him
a rainbow to cover

the silver snail
that would be
saving a lot.

mary angela douglas 31 march 2018

Categories

we have been taught the categories
and so we know in what shoebox
to plant old stars, tinsel or the

waning moons.
to keep the memory of snow
old maps of renamed kingdoms.

small pianos in tune

the bit of amber and tracing paper
old skates, the first short summer camp trip
from home

could ages be longer.
here are old watches long run out of time
the things without rhyme or reason

the evidence we saved
of the days of festival.
but I am wondering

at the bottom of the stairs
where I left the other things
the signet rings

the faith the dream
that I need now
oh how will I find them how

who lose a little each day
the heart to claim them.

mary angela douglas 30 march 2018

.

Falling Off The Edge Of Sleep

it's like falling off the edge of sleep
we said in a story that we made up
to have something new for the

dolls to say and did they dream
we wondered well into summer
to the edge of the New School Year.

what else is it like
well the trees hold magic
turning green to orange and yellow

finally into red and the first thing
we do at school is to cut around
the leaf designs on construction

paper matching each shade
and paste the paper leaves
on our windowpanes

while outside, secretly
in every breeze
we sense somehow

at our paper harvests

the real leaves laughing
through the ice blue air;
thinking they are spared.

mary angela douglas 30 march 2018

Emily, It Is Getting Late (Second Version)

[for Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas]

for Emily Dickinson

Emily, it is getting late:
the blaze on the trees and
the blaze on the poems are one;

the snow clouds tick the towns away
and I am on my own to stare
at the wall that readily turns to stars.

I know that you would understand
the quatrains of this early moon
the open question of the wind

the quotidian you somehow find
an open window through which shines
so close at hand your own Sublime

and then I hear from distant years
a background music suitable to you
it’s something from Charles Ives*

that moves
over the same bent fields…

while in a golden age we think
we may have many years to see
but the maple’ s ensign warns us

you are nearer than
these silver riddles fluttering from your hands
we still can read:

inscribed with their own answers
as God’s may be – I’d like to think
He’s pouring over them again

tipping back His amethyst chair
as any fond Father would
but in my sleep

an unnamed orb keeps bleeding ivory words
and disappearing
as it did, (I think) so many times for you-

the lamp’s unlit…
and it’s nothing’s set upon the household candlestick now:
vivid for a nation or a world within a world;

within each secret’s secret self
to counter the miniature glorias set in pearl
you well remember as an infinite girlhood

since it was just you singing, singeing them…
I can’t dispel the sense of something blamed or
someone radiant lingering here

with somewhat more to say on these lost subjects…

I stand stock -still by the mossy door
where Beauty’s shadow seems to veer
and wonder only to myself

just who in the glittering days ahead
will comprehend
as if by heart-

as if they wrote the words themselves-
the least hue in your brightening palm
the gleaming instant caught out in surmise:

I seem to clasp,
so briefly, meadow-sweet-
and vastly-then, as now-

before the first
or the last snows of Poetry itself-

mary angela douglas 9-10 october 2011;rev. 29 march 2018; slight rev. 6 march 2021

*reference to Charles Ives ( American New England composer) musical composition: “The Unanswered Question” which he refused to identify.

When God Is Our Grief

when God is our grief
we wade for hours
crossing small creeks

or peering through
the crack in the blinds
in the whitest of dawns

praying stop the sun now
for dread has weighted shoes
somehow

sometimes

how can we move;
the least leaf on the tree
the last fo fall we seem

and yet still want to live
the contradiction out
when God is our grief

and tears drown in a sieve.

mary angela douglas 28 march 2018

Early Rilke

music, foundation of empires I dreamed then
in the rattling days suddenly a clear space rose,
and everything fades except a single terrace

of night, this fabric of stars;.lost,
coming into view
where are you he hears his angels call

the violins in the yard

spilling out of windows wending through
the early lillacs' scent.
he answers nothing

while the universe forms words slowly
in a drift of mint.
I am lined with stars he cries

what am I to do with them now

mary angela douglas 28 march 2018

The Kitchen Maid In The Garden

[from a song cycle on Hans Andersen's The Nightingale]

a jeweled bird is their constellation;it won't be mine.
mine is the plain one that no one can unwind
or wind

the free one on the small winds, fee simple;
it binds my heart's disconsolation
on the clock without hands

the lilied one and skims the
surface of departing light
whenever I leave or think I can

what is continually mourned
and alternately, soothed.

we walk through the ghosts of music
my shadow and I bemused
through the long grasses, by the river

and it is nightfall falling again
staining the viridian grasses blue
oh blue, the colour where I hide

to hear the slight bird sing
to the ghosts of music not of enterprise
and they are all weeping, then.

mary angela douglas 28 march 2018

Down At The Not So O.K. Poetry Corral (Second Version)

It's filtered through clouds

through cinematic trees
rustling in old black and white

scenes you can't quite frame but you feel a something there
as of angels waiting to be revealed and can't compare it
to any other feeling you could "share with the others

what is this poem about" the lecturer begins
candy sweet taskmaster of the seen
and be seen

with the old familiar stick
pointing to the rules for this
they've just come up with

by scary consensus: today we're
writing haiku about macrome
and you say, collywobbly longing to be at home

catching those flicks, and not this flack
excuse me I'll just go get my hat, my hatpin

I can see Im at the wrong address
and so you step out backwards
holding eye contact with what?

with whom, the voice resumes
its judgement; j'accuse, you confess
(you know the process)

to not being overfond of turning
verbs into nouns and finding it all
actionable

I didn't sign up you say
I'll just be on my way

and the clasp on your patent leather
pocketbook breaks, spilling the contents
(only happens when you're nervous

oh how can I deserve this)
on the floor while everyone roars
too many metaphors

in not so silent reading
of your just too metrical breath
and you feel tucked inside

a nightmare pocket
where you'll have to reside
while the composition of your soul

is openly discussed and decided on
in committee

you don't know who I am am am
your voice flows down a retrograde canyon.
out of hand land

with few wildflowers, a rusted out pail

such a becoming jail...
and you wake up shaking
the poem still iridescent in your head

they wanted to strangle.
from every angle.;
until it was Dead.

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Down At The Not So O.K. Poetry Corral

It's filtered through clouds
through cinematic trees
rustling in old black and white

scenes you can't quite frame but you feel a something there
as of angels waiting to be revealed and can't compare it
to any other feeling you could "share with the others

what is this poem about" the lecturer begins

candy sweet  taskmaster of the seen
and be seen

with the old familiar stick
pointing to the rules for this
they've just come up with

by scary consensus: today we're
writing haiku about macrome
and you say, collywobbly longing to be at home

catching those flicks, and not this flack
excuse me I'll just go get my hat, my hatpin

I can see Im at the wrong address
and so you step out backwards
holding eye contact with what?

with whom, the voice resumes
its judgement; j'accuse, you confess
(you know the process)

to not being overfond of turning
verbs into nouns and finding it all
actionable

I didn't sign up you say
I'll just be on my way

and the clasp on your patent leather
pocketbook breaks, spilling the contents
(only happens when you're nervous

oh how can I deserve this)

on the floor while everyone roars
too many metaphors
in not so silent reading

of your unmetrical breath

and you feel tucked inside
a nightmare pocket
where you'll have to reside

where the composition of your soul
is openly discussed  and decided on
in committee

you don't know who I am am am
your voice echoes down a retrograde canyon
with few wildflowers, a rusted out pail

such a becoming jail...

and you wake up shaking
the poem still iridescent in your head
they wanted to strangle.

from every angle.;
until it was Dead.

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Identity Is The Music (Second Version)

identity is the music

the fingerprint swirl in clay
the living imprint, still,

of a bygone day.
the player piano roll
now on display,

the sunset repetitions.
slight alterations
of the way you felt one May

there you are under the willow
and your harp at bay
mute in a mermaid affliction

with nothing you can say.
my identity. the trees whisper
when their own leaves fall

but this is not a headline.
or the writing on the wall
nor the cause celebre by politics fed

the boring beast, just released,
generic peace.

this is what orpheus meant,eurydice
in the Kingdom of the Dead
and you who think it is in

the trending ink or you're on the brink
of the stagelit prize
don't understand don't understand

that it's all lies.
identity is the music
and not the polemical stand.

visionary, on the faraway Strand

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Identity Is The Music

identity is the music
the fingerprint swirl in clay
the living imprint, still,

of a bygone day.

the piano player roll
now on display,
the sunset repetitions.

slight alterations
of the way you felt one May

there you are under the willow
and your harp at bay
mute in a mermaid affliction

with nothing you can say.
my identity. the trees whisper
when their own leaves fall

but this is not a headline.
or the writing on the wall
nor the cause celebre by politics fed

the boring beast, just released,
generic peace.

this is what orpheus meant,eurydice

in the Kingdom of the Dead
and you who think it is in
the trending ink or you're on the brink

of the stagelit prize

don't understand don't understand
you are not wise.
identity is the music

and not the polemic stand.
visionary, on the faraway Strand

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Still

we would be decoding the skies
if only we had known
there would be maps

that lied: here is water
where there was none.
later. reading in school

this is how the Indians knew
a hard winter was on its way
if only we could remember

what was the sign.
and people will misinterpret what we say
and shard like disappear

into an inner wounding

and duel with nothing
and call it won.
and I will sigh for the days to come

oh let them come,
anyway.

we still have God.

mary angela douglas 22 march 2018

After The Japanese, To The Memory Of The Imagists

one night while children slept
it began to rain flowers.
it rained flowers all night

and they stepped out in their
petal like dreams, their hands
cupped like flowers the snow

skiess filled up, like the cups of
lilies. this was music
the monologue referred to

itself and we are on the stage
that moonlight made, is making.
we are the dream of the flowers

and we will not be the same.
being now the imaginary denizens
of a flower kingdom, far away.

mary angela douglas 21 march 2018

Somewhere The Hills Were Blue

I remember somewhere the hills were blue
in the distance, shading to violet
when it rained they receded to watercolours

and we sang about them then.
we were young then
shading into blue ballads

and loved the fairytale where the heroune put on
her gown of gold, embellished with the sun
and splendidly shone.

asking nothing but to live among bill hills
that shaded into violet
and then became embroidered

with the rains.

mary angela douglas 20 march 2018

A Plan For Making It Through All On Your Own

maybe they want the beautiful to disappear
so that they may rule and reign, the trolls,
present under every bridge and you

must pay their fee.
or stay at home.
how often then would we long

for the cloak of invisibility

at any birthday, under the Christmas tree
welcomed
or on the list of the required

school supplies.along with the protractor
the pencil case that slides open.
and the cray pas.

but aboveground we were too visible a target.
how do roses grow I thought in this cold climate
why do not all castles sink at every nod and wink

at the dubious eyebrow raised in the
nightmare madrigal. near graduation
You are on the brink they say

of the life before you.
but you know
they're out there under the

bridge construction going on
all the time out on highway 101
just waiting for you, the trolls

near the office park where you will work

for some one's professional smirk to
grow smirkier while you toil and
where you must learn again and again

not to depend on accolades.or good reviews
just be glad that you are you that God is nigh
still making it through

and safe across the bridge again by nightfall
behind your rose clabbered walls
small but free

reading about invisible kingdoms

lost continents where nothing like this
is required of you.beyond merely blooming.

mary angela douglas 20 march 2018

Forever Unable To See The Skies As They Were

after reading Rilke I thought now we are
embroidered on his far distances, not our own,,
the encroaching stars

the angels at Eden
where it all burst into bloom
Rilke, the trees whispered then

and the wind arose the interstellar
space the unutterable bridge.has flowered between us:
the collapses endured in childhood, winged.

oh how will we sing this, forever translating hymn
his song upon song enfolded
vast, petals of the Rose...

infolding now in us, but first,
in him.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2018

For Stephen Hawking

perhaps he made up for us a little

who waste so many chances
to even look at the sky

complaining in the traffic-about-
the sun in our eyes-
in all his wondering whys

his looking back at the broken picture puzzle cracked as
on a vast unchartered track, an endless spiraling,
diamonded, past what anyone else would do

should the thought even occur to them
star mapping Time, first breath christening
and paradoxical flowering into the

personally catastrophic and then, to begin again
as if it were music and the very first bar
picking up the golden thead no one else perceived

and leaving everything but his mind as collateral
for all thieves and enforced loitering, demented roadblocks
as perhaps the price to pay for meddling with the known

conclusions of those who own the prize at the moment
and will not let it go
how odd that he only burrowed farther on

as if he nested then among the stars
there being truly no alternative
and the faraway look in his eyes hardening

crystalized into
the day before the day before..into a shoal of light
no equations of the lost but a firmer step

where for him there was no ground possible
forming the formulated never yet conceived
in syllables no longer couched

in his own human voice
and circumspect
without real wings

there being no other choice;
shutting out all the noise of the self
pitying possibilities

ever more thickly befalling
deformed in the outer world
yet still his bow was bent and the golden

arrows flew so straight
past all anyone knew or could acknowledge, calculate

such a fate he had! and acceleration

the riddle more and more beautiful as he
climbed, nay, crawled toward the summits
oh angel I will not let thee go

except thou bless me
to grasp the fantastic hold he had on measuring
what couldn’t be measured they said

once they glimpsed he already had
and were sore amazed
oh let him be laid to rest on a boat of stars

and rowed on the magic waters
home.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2018

For Stephen Hawking

perhaps he made up for us a little
who waste so many chances
to even look at  the sky

complaining in the traffic-about-
the sun in our eyes-
in  all his wondering whys

his looking back at the broken picture puzzle as
on a vast unchartered track an endless spiraling,
diamonded, past what anyone else would do

should the thought even occur to them
star mapping Time, first breath christening
and paradoxical flowering into the

personally catastrophic and then, to begin again
as if it were music and the very first bar
picking up the golden thead no one else perceived

and leaving everything but his mind as collateral
for all thieves and enforced loitering, demented roadblocks

as perhaps the price to pay for meddling with the known
conclusions of those who own the prize at the moment
and will not let it go

how odd that he only burrowed farther on

as if he nested then among the stars
there being truly no alternative
and the faraway look in his eyes hardening

crystalized into
the day before the day before..into infinity
no equations of the lost but a firmer step

where for him there was no ground possible

forming the formulated never yet conceived
in syllables no longer even couched
in his own human voice

there being no other choice;
shutting out all the noise of the self
pitying possibilities

ever more thickly befalling

deformed in the outer world
yet still his bow was bent and the golden
arrows flew so straight

past all anyone knew or could acknowledge, calculate
such a fate he had! and acceleration

the riddle more and more beautiful as he
climbed, nay, crawled toward the summits
oh angel I will not let thee go

except thou bless me
to grasp the fantastic hold he had on measuring

what couldn't be measured they said
once they glimpsed he already had
and were sore amazed

oh let him be laid to rest on a boat of stars
and rowed on the magic waters
home.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2018

To The Fields In Their Summer Flowering

His cast off flowers (cast vividly in the play
cast playfully) they are though men deem them
weeds in the fields near highways

a nuisance in domestic gardens

or by  tentative woodland streams that will depart them,
cheerfully suffering but how could you see it that way
when they bend gaily in the winds all their flags fluttering,

not much to look at really.

only children really see them.
and want to run there oh flower filled home;
oh I can see them

flower ships caught, untaught

in the wild grasses tangled, dew spangled
uncomplicated, flourishing
all on their own.

they will not sail but they don't know
that yet while I

want to wave goodbye, a lump in my throat
to the yellow and lavender blur
I may not see again in this world

from my grandparents' pale blue car
with it's new car smell.
and fleetingly I only feel

cannot surmise
I'm from the same wild star you are
and perishable

not one to compose the pale rosebud corsage
or with orchid certainties behind the frosted glass
of the busy floral shops all maytime dream I'm

destined to adorm the beauiful,
reminding them of themselves.
whose wellspring are you?

whose wallpaper murmur
the little houses in between exits.

you won't be that either when a vapid climate spurns you
though you are turning
in buttercup yearning or cornflower brevity

a sunny and an untended eye toward His vast, the
daylight skies;

receiving the seeming randomness of His rains.
you will endure.
how beautiful you are I whisper as a child, sure,

lacelike cream or purple or the gold everywhere streaming
as though through you He couldn't stop gleaming
and though I do not know your names

I know we are relatives all the same, in the world,
everywhere subject to the whims of men
who''ll mow you down wherever you are

unheedful of your scars again and again

new real estate being the dominant trait they see
in the scenes where you're a mass of unrepeatable bloom;
in your bitter fields then, those yields will multiply.

but I in even my smallest hours keep
the memory of your heedless sweep

your secret tears
in the dews of those summered years
revealed when I was still

with my own people.
thinking, we will always be.

mary angela dougas 18 march 2018

The Fairy Tale As It Stands And Bound To Be True

this is the fairy tale as it stands
The King in exile
the instant we disobeyed

the green kingdoms slipping from His hands
and remonstrances fading the anguished
wringing of bells, the inward collapse of stars.

Adam where are you rang through all the fields
and then dissolved
oh Eve and they cried too as though on

a glacier breaking apart
swift unraveling the continent of the Heart
oh, Disappearing

the word Catastrophe flung into the abyss
to explain all of this ravaging
of what we were where are we now.

oh fond farewells...and fading, escalating
and then: nothing on either side.
no way to begin

just a Blank in time.
for aeons.

and yet, pink petals rained through all the Springs
and dawns came to the world, blue evenings expired
but in a kind of diffused, a slanted light

iced over geometries
ah, the Snow Queens...

and Beauty through a snaked universe
in mourning veils and mists
imploring

trampled by thieves, the grate steam rising

in which we could not recognize His face;
our own hands phantoms befoe us. we are
orphans worshipping stone

our insufficiency.

we are raised fists
we wept and then felt nothing
more than this nothing

settled in the labyrinths

building overproud, mute towers of
new desolations. innovations.

now we are blinded as in a deafening snow

alone, we stumble on sans poetry
though He is whispering in every tree
to the angels straying by His side:

still, I still can see them there
and I am everywhere;
they think that I am dead!

or something in their head
they must uproot

I love you, love you still! he cried
hoping to reach the other side
and small doves came

holding up his rainbows

at each end
to make Him laugh, forget for a little while
his depths of disconsolation

while He smiled an instant,
breaking down again...

years past. we slept.
and there were wars
the settling of scores

that could never be settled really
the scuttling of old plans.
the awful scars.

then music arose ocasionally played
and words flamed tipped end to end
the Divine ascents

the star over the lowly child.
oh come Immanuel.
the golden key

and not the beginning of sorrows infinitely discharged
though it is doomed, destined to seem so
for a long and afflicted time

still to come to the chamberless heart
while we sing carols to the dark.
and the holy infant cried.

mary angela douglas 15 march 2018