Forgive Me If I Remain Ignorant

forgive me if I remain ignorant
of the routes of silk, of spices
of the rise and fall of the dreaming child

while gathering into my silver baskets
all possible birdsong.
forgive me for vanishing so often

in the schoolroom
or far from the working day
into the reveries

hidden within clay
journeying to the center
of my imagined earth

and overfond of ferns
while they forever whisper
when will she ever learn.

I learned to ask this thing

how can stars be so vast
and the working day so small
so petty as not to be seen

though magnified to unwarranted sheen
forgive me for failing the eye test
on these and other things

Deemed Important by Our Leaders.
the most brilliant, in any room.
what is freedom for sometimes I think

if not to wool gather gold

or like Poe, to contemplate El Dorado
urging the mists forward;
the horses forever mired in mud.

or what is this republic anyway
all republics foundering in their cloudless Day
when they mark a trail far from God.

maybe it's that way, finally,
everything goes astray

but the republic of music
of High and Intractable Song

all possible birdsong and
the heart appeased
if not, nations.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2018

Wanted: A Small Room

I want a small room, on the moon
or at the poles, that opens onto
the universe and endless blue terraces

a violet fold in a dress of rose
a bird that nightly sings
with iridescent wings

reminding me of many things beautiful
I want to remain and singing
and free to dream

as far as the eye can never see
and not to be remotely seen but just to be
with God's handkerchief

in His best pocket
I want a small room...

mary angela douglas 30 august 2018

You Were That Child

you wanted a rose red sign from God
His signature rose
so many times

on the way home or to and fro or the mist clearing just
as you hit the service road to take the early morning
bus with that chill air still nightfall everywhere

Orion visible, your leading star.
remember whose you are the predawn
whisper of the trees

then you could feel between worlds
and not in the workplace anymore.
and who could make you feel small then

when everything

came to you on the winds the star breathing winds
prescient with snow colours pasteling in the picture books
you were that child

seeking that kind of sign.

mary angela douglas 30 august 2018

Something For Arthur Rubinstein

even earlier you were beginning to be connected
to something no longer on earth
so that ghosts of white orchid hearing their music played

so rarely, paused to weep
and then forgot they were.
it may have been on impossible blue evenings

someone begins to perceive and weeping sings
or tries to say:
who can hold the note of rapture

in a noteless age..
now music is a shriek
and echoes fade

breaking away,
as if they were continents=
from the main

mary angela douglas 29 august 2018

Gazing At Flowers In My Fading Floral Dress

gazing at flowers in my faded floral dress
maybe we make a poem in this public garden
fading to future fading, addressed

and the skies are fading too
into a watered silk blue near the hyacinths
as they are fated to.

yet, they are new oh watershed
within my heart,
fresh fountains flow

and not as in Dowland.
if you knew brief casual passersby
the freshness of the gardens there...

but you are unaware
and see if you see at all
just one in an old dress shrinking

among bright roses
and perhaps feel irritable
at the contrasts.

mary angela douglas 28 august 2018/rev. 4 december 2018

To Our Lady Poverty

how weak were we
dining on plum blue shadows
no table mat anymore.

how odd to live behind a door with no roof.
roofless, we endured
finding a home in the pear tree

in our sprigged dresses under moonlight.
under moonlight, I counted out my change
hoping to buy another word with God.

in the morning I found
golden coins
had rained down in my sleep.

mary angela douglas 27 august 2018

When I Was Queen Of The Paper Doll Stage (My Sister Too)

when I was queen of a paper doll stage
(my sister too)
the one dimensional characters with tin foil crowns

we liked to move around
in candy coloured shades from the cellophane on the footlights
(flashlight)

and weeping over the roseless briars
my sister and I, composing angelic choirs
duets, where we ran up and down the scales

to find the harmonies
cut out the tracing paper moons from Christmas stationery
and let the light shine through-Heavenly Light, we deemed it

through the muslin curtained window on the Blue
in our old room.
let me remind you we were the directors

screen adapters too
sometimes mixing plays so that

the little girl who strayed in the rose red cape
the tiny wicker basket full of elderberry jam
homemade butter and yeast rolls our best prop

on her rickety way
to grandmama indisposed
quite often wound up at the castle not

the cottage door and was suddenly The Princess.


we mixed and matched the actors in their roles
on the cardboard stage displayed on a
circus figured table that could also hold fresh cocoa

(with the little marshmallows) for

never the same play twice.
I miss those plays and how the dolls loved them
especially Raggedy Ann in her sprigged dress, overwashed apron

her permanently peppermint striped socks
her fixed sweet smile from the dress circle
egging us on

clapping like rain against the leaves

her soft padded hands.
at our commands.

mary angela douglas 27 august 2018

As I Stood Before The Looking Glass Wood

as I stood before the looking glass wood
seven angels at my side
all other mirrors glanced aside

their windows blackening.
I saw the balloon of emerald glide
down to the shivering shore.

seven angels at my side
the rose composed of deep thought
and a singular fragrance

wrought of me the vow of childhood
not to forsake.
not to forsake and the seven angels cried

and the candelebras of the stars wept the dew
and this is you then and you now dressed in meteors, simply

still at the wood's edge and the candled whispered wish
in your head on the fond cake with the family then

the pledge taken
with vows as soft as snow unbeknownst to them
the emerald balloon ascending

the seven angels by my side.
the night countries of Orion.

the woods lit up with snow in the Dream Time.
I hear them whispering, goodbye,goodbye my child
the red rose shielded in my heart through thickening winds

no emblem of the moment but abiding

and God the garden, guardian, the snows in my heart filling up
to the brim of starlight broken apart, the bread of Beauty.
and all of it, in a lava of gold cannot cannot subside

a quake of the beautiful
awakening awakening
I have brought and sold none of it

cherry bright preserved it beyond diamond bright
There, on the Other Side not made of stone, but if so,
stone weeping weeping

mystifying the angels
my balloon glides home.

mary angela douglas 24 august 2018

And The Incoming Tide

I think of toys, of vanished children
of deep pockets in old storybooks
perhaps a caramel or two I

might fish out wrapped in gold foil,
the silver net of dreams.
I think perhaps it was all sugarplum

bright, Eden without exception
the cream, real cream in the coffee
the steam from old radiators rising

and their clanking announcements
it's January mornings. or it's April chill
old Fords built to last.

oh my surmising heart
from fiddle stix and pick up sticks
in every shade inlaid

I wander there in proverbial attics
and wonder why they retired
the chintz chairs. the cottage furnished

with everything echoing flowers, flowers
the maple and the lemon leaves
flying against blue windowpanes

blue windowpanes and sticking there
Jack Frost, the hurricane lamp it's flare on
oilcloth, tablecloth, bone china

the cracks in the window frames
letting in all the stars.

the candy jars
where once we ate our fill.
geraniums on the window sills

brave and scarlet.
and Sunday newspaper thoughts of brides
with stephanotis held high

the silvered, pearled bouquets
and the incoming tide.

mary angela douglas 24 august 2018

The Beautiful Things Not Playing Their Part

the beautiful things have arisen in my heart
they will not be quelled
nor will they play their part

on the incriminating stage
but rise with gold spotted wings
above the trembling

gilding the clouds, greening
the everglades of the stars
staining the ground

with fuschia shadows.
endlessly now.

mary angela douglas 23 august 2018

Seed Pearl Not The Rose

seed pearl not the rose that it may lovelier shine
or drop a stitch into the wishing well of Time
embroidering not the falcon nor the falconer's hand

let the bird that we called poetry 
fly free that it may sow the skies with silver
so that the trees of jade weep

weep into the mirroring waters.

mary angela douglas 23 august 2018

I Only See

back then we thought the emerald way
would always be ours
the golden hours of play

the witches few.
the curse lifted in the midnight tome
the Kingdom sparkle under a new moon.

how I have yearned for you,
lost fairy tale worlds
your silvered spinning-...

at every hour I must be winning back
and follow every track of, every trace
the grim have erased.

let the race be to the swift

and the lid be lifted on the miseries.
I only see blue fairied Hope
the ferry to  the green slopes of Avalon and

the King Returning, the end of wrongs
and hear: the vast, autumnal Airs-
the rubied orb of Song.

mary angela douglas 23 august 2018

To God My Father In The January Sleet Remembered

he's always branching off into leaves into little asides of flowers
momentary novas
how can he help it

try to hold a conversation with him just once
and you'll see what I mean
don't ever challenge him to a  colouring contest

He's the Colour Wheel!

before you can even get the blue crayon out of the box
he's coloured Everything and added red rainbows.
take music for an example

you've got a tune in your head
he's got cathedrals full, gushing waterfalls and Messiaen
the whole works and the fourth of July too

not only Sousa and the 1812 Overture, boom boom.
He likes Charles Ives. And being Alive.
We're all fireworks to him and my friend,

he doesn't ever use stencils.

he's all the worlds fairs and all that's fair
not only in love and war;
he has the scars to prove it

and the wherewithall to be
the peddler of all peddlers
come and see

the vintage scarves over canyons, the shawls to brooches wed
the hoarding of valentines one single Iris
extended from the child with the grubby hand

treasured.

he's without overhead on luncheonettes
with banana cream pies; he likes to riddle you or I
the tiny riddles in the Bazooka wrappers, bubble gum

in pink or green. treading the boards incessantly
in every Shakespearian scene.

he's without measure, measuring sticks, clocks that tick
he doesn't need Time
or a thousand doves on his Birthday

he hasn't got one. or Mercury dimes, come to think of it.
sometimes he longs for a rose piped cake,
the frosting left in the bowl, I think so,

the little seed cakes out of Tolkien

or on the brink of snowfalls wishes for us
a thousand thousand Christmases
all at once

arriving as
we get off the bus
in a cold and sleety January

to a slightly unheated apartment.
oh he's a Department store
on every floor you'll find Him taking the escalator to...

especially the perfume aisle with his white floral notes
a hint of orange blossom, citrus, citrus, He smiles

sighing in jasmine, ruffling the coastal waters
oh sons and daughtes or look for him 

out in the mists herding the clouds of mignonette
and even in this
impossible possible poem.apparent
in mirror writing.

mary angela douglas 20 august 2018

The King Of Small Hearts

I said hello to the king of small hearts
not thinking, he said later
what was I thinking

to address him in such a manner
he didn't like my chatter
but I wasn't chattering I said

I was dreaming aloud of lofty things, instead.
he shot always
the bird on the wing

not the bird at rest.
the bird on the wing is best
for a person like me

said he.just playing a part
to the hilt of a tilted sunrise.
such an artist.

such a marksman I thought
of the king of small hearts.

mary angela douglas 18 august 2018

Learning To Say

I understood that songs could come to you
out of the thickets, the shifting of the green
leaves and boughs and trees

Cezanne like, the blue; and the yellow
domicile yellow as cream
and the pine abstractions

and deeper the cypress than anything
far, far into the woods beyond the world
said Morris mystically and Sidney Lanier.

and I the child in the porch swing
early and late when the blue dusks came down.
what is time asked the child can I hold it

in my hand and will it melt
"into the pink sands" said her mother
and then she was gone.

so long! I cried
thinking it was in a dream
and some of it was.

which am I, remembering now,
I could not tell you for sure.
but light is sifting down the boughs

in a heavy darkness I am not innured
magnolia like the stars
are large as the heart

slowly unfolding
learning to say oh,
goodbye.

mary angela douglas 18 august 2018

I Shall Miss Silver Buttons

I shall miss silver buttons
thimbles in the King cake,
the many threaded hours

and waking for their sake
revive again, a little of
the roseate

the rose tinged power
of dreaming as it was then
the dew in the grass

when summer has passed
and the twirling parasol of milk white silk
in the dusk when we cried

lavender lavender
skies are falling down
how will we know

the ones we lost in Heaven
she sang the lullaby of the silver shoon
and there too she will be singing

I love the moon and the little
flowers in the grass
and all of this coming to pass

as we did 
once the birds singing early or late
at His least, most beneficient Word

I shall, new sandcastles make...

mary angela douglas 16 august 2018

Shelley, My Shelley

bright as the wanderer on the beckoning air
Shelley my Shelley whispered Blake
presciently above the tree line

as viewed by angels.
Sistine as it was then and setting
the several suns 

through the holograms of autumn
the beckoning ones
and the sky all Depression era

white and rainbowed glass
the angels of glass falling to earth
and their parachutes useless.

you have wings Shelley my Shelley
far above the treelines and the dullness
that dreams it is shining

earth, oh earth you should be heaven too
the poets sang
when they remembered you

mary angela douglas 16 august  2018

In The Weeping Hour

in the weeping hour
that comes to us unforeseen
when the golden things,

people and places
are falling apart struck by an unseen hand
and the heart the heart 

as Brodsky said goes on living
even while it seems to you
that it could not

let us weep diamonds then
let us speak pearls while human words remain to us
that do not have to be rented, bought or sold

out from under us

of defiant joy

so that beauty even in falling apart
may remain on earth.even though we are forgotten
even though we forget.

let Love be the victor yet.
though tenantless. torn down
stone by stone.

mary angela douglas 16 august 2018

Blue Not The Blue Shading Into Lilac

blue not the blue shading into lilac
but the blue itself, isolate crystal
I isolate you

clean precipitate
of the dreaming soul
without rejoinders.

see I have built from you
a few lacework kingdoms
from a single strand

one eyelash from the moon.
how out of favor you are
blue not going anywhere at all

they think
I see you on the brink of tears
and glimpse you through dissolving years

ah blue of the world so weary
vanishing beyond clouds
into the Far Sapphire piled up stratospheres

where the winds are found.
sleeping.

mary angela douglas 12 august 2018

The Last Afternoon of De La Mare

goodbye my fancy and the little garden close
perhaps he whispered
leaving the door ajar

I followed in silver, centuries the wistful too late
through the mist and through an unguarded gate
oh all of this is left and none to turn the page

each book upon its shelf the secret self jeweled change
quivers harplike in the vanishing that remains
who wonders how now

the poems inscribed grey seawater
welling in why pretend it doesn't hurt
the dust laid over it in the russet declines

old friend of the faraway faraways that you desert
the borderlands, the last angel on the road.
it's stenciled in our grief like home foregone

or like a diamond bas relief, starlike prone

your etching on the sundial
weeping Time.
thank you forever, from the land of shadows

came the softened cries
the fiery faery edged wood rustling listlessly:
be good he said, wreathed in smiles

where the branched cherry stood

dissolving
pure lavender....evensong oh, chimed
words, words

melting into the sheer unshored
why must you disappear despaired
the budding, the Perseid Showers.

the sweet inlaid mother of pearl of
the in between hours
why will you go- I asked the snows

who else will colour it in for us
in otherworldly tints

everything that is hinted at
when the winds are stilled.

mary angela douglas 12 august 2018

Miss Pink Tomato And The Cosmological Constant

for my sister, Sharon F. Douglas

I remember when she loved peridot necklaces
and we stood pink watch over the rose patch
courtesy of our Grandfather in our backyard or

when she entered Julliard, all summer long
before that hearing Chopin played at home
in incessant rippling beauty

as if Chopin had come back

his pale blue rainy ghost
in my Grandmother's piano studio looking on
and the notes clear raindrops you could see through

we laughed at the same jokes or our teddies did
which amounted to the same thing in the beginning
then she grew wings 

stepping off the Sleeping Beauty stage
as one of the gifted fairies in the third grade
the most realistic fairy everyone agreed

the school had ever seen...

to play Hedda Gabler on an Arkansas stage
a few musical nosegays reminiscent of
Cole, Berlin, Gershwin

she breathed Gershwin breathing out a rare sapphire sound
before that a kind of crystalline
version of Amadeus.at the age of ten

with Dimiti Mitropolis 

we grew apart
but not in my heart
she made people laugh

in new york caberet
with her version of Little Miss Pink Tomato
spouting Secular Umanism.

Pretty sure with a lisp.
And other glitzy characters
piano riffs

Piaf from a roseate view
I wonder if she ever knew
how much I cherished

even the memory
of how much she hated fried okra.
and loved her padded book report

in pink and blue=
on Rosa Bonheur.

mary angela douglas 11 august 2018

We Were So Happy

let there be light He said then there was a

pearl efflorescence and we were so happy

there was light the children could call by name

in the nursery and the mobiles of the stars

and glittering the dew upon the roses.

let there be.

there was, there were hours and days and nights

and the gold of His urn spilled over at our feet

and there were jewels of Seasons

too many to carry home.

home was the flower at the core of light

we were its petals we laughed in rosebuds,

small pink candles;

sighed, oh the snows have fallen upon it all

when we were girls and whirled into it.

we called this dancing and sometimes The Ballet

and we wore skirts the colours of roses

and mysterious shawls and peridots oh the green

yellow sparkle of being new on the scene

came to us it came to us that we were Spring

that we were the flowers of light and the leaves

then we were spinning

beautiful balance we had in the inner courtyards

an inner certitude a feeling

that He knew who we were

when the small birds came to our hands

even if no one else

knew what to do with us.

mary angela douglas 11 august 2018