Still To Be Dreaming

once in summer's sandals to be shod
never to live then any other way
not to nod off, still to be dreaming

anywhere, nascent incipient singing through Yeats I am
the rose of the world by the summer gate blooming
then all we wanted was our share of dark cherry lollipops

day to day and Mama's stories and to play or
suddenly, to find fluttering to the floor
from some old fashioned book she once adored

mapped on brown paper
the way the Princess took
from the castle.

draw the drawbridge in
the winter is coming
we heard at the matinees

the ones we made up, evading all homework
the winter of centuries delayed
and the map and the castle crumble away

dark cherries, cobblers butter rich
the green gate swings no more
you're in the ditch evading storms

you say whenever you say anything these days.
in sequined Dissolve! the fading scenes fade
and the chamomille lawns

the games of croquet
the dairy maids singing in the jeweled grass
when something Irish came to pass

I know we lived this once
it's not too late
still to be dreaming

still self taught in a visionary way
to be caught up in to the very end in this,
the lace of the day

mary angela douglas 30 december 2018

I Celebrate Construction Paper Chains

I celebrate construction paper chains of red and green
or green and red depending on the word order in your sentence
and schoolroom paste the wide mouthed wonder of it

with its own brush and each to each the colours linked
bedecking the first grade's Tree say, can you see
through classroom years those Christmas clearings very dear

crepe paper bells, their honeycombed weave
folding out precisely as a rose oh holy night silent
rimmed and multicoloured lovely across the street

who knows how kindly we felt toward those
and rosy punch in little cups we supped in
the middle of the day let out early, on our way

with butter cookies shaped like stars
with sprinkles, silver beads
soft thoughts of those in need

oh there you are, lost Christmas party joy
and tinseled garlands flung above street lights, boy oh boy
we're all candle glow and caroling

car showroom windows stenciled with spray can snow
and holly berries goodness knows what else, wax angels!
hardware stores lit up like fairy tales

the drugstore paradise, chocolate cherries' shrine
the toy trains showing off the rails
last minute gifts before the final chime

mysterious trinkets, what a find!
fresh hair bows, velveteen and reindeer cheerful gift wrap,
spring colognes and early snow

this fountaining joy everywhere we go it's Christmas
who is ashamed to know and let it be echoed
soul to soul as if we all were pealing bells

children and grownups too in pageants of our own
the Christ child scenes enacting through and through
the shepherd, wise man, the free from school

at Christmas feeling evergreen new.

mary angela douglas 28 december 2018

All Life

all life hangs on a thread of wonder

alas, my heart, that many don't think this anymore
so many doors they won't walk through
eschewing the gardens that wait for them;
the Emerald City at the end
I don't know how they live.
it shines in everything, invisible worlds
uncurl like ferns and morning glories
golden stories that we love and shores and
what there is to love of vast seas marked unknown
on unaccountable maps, the elusive thread
that winds its way through entire lifetimes
only to begin again

beginning itself, first snows with no footprints yet
oh may my heart not learn to forget
its treasury of sunrise

I will not countenance any other music
all my allusive days and ways; waste it
standing down in darkness,
far from Praise.

mary angela douglas 28 december 2018

They Would All Find Out

what if you were swinging in the playground swing
on the very playground you were on at first
the ghost of yourself

or the air swings the front porch swing
as though it were made of flowers
and it is evening and you feel

you want to sing something
what is it
the plum colour of the evening?

the wind swinging the blossoms?
the birds indiscernable
missing the moon's silver.

what can deliver you from this feeling
as if you were suddenly made of lilacs
and you couldn't speak of it to anyone

or break the spell

and you knew, in your flower self
the moon had disappeared from the sky forever
and in the morning,

they would all find out.

mary angela douglas 27 december 2018

People Were Hamming It Up/The Moon Like a Marble

people were hamming it up at the Kennedy Center Honors
outside a drizzle, a mist above the Potomac
the recessive angels sang, the small birds

Whitman in the dock, who else
angels have run amuck
somewhere a crystal clear star is shining

unobtrusively 
to God belongs all acclaim
I whispered in the rains

to the mists above the Potomac
recitative and the long dawn lost
after the longer night

angels wept in the outer rings
the monuments kept watch
the moon like a marble

stilled the music of the heart
except where it turned to Glass
as on the day after battlefields

and beauty has drained, at last, the cup

while people are hamming it up
at the Kennedy Center
center of whatnot.

mary angela douglas 26 december 2018

For The Angels Dressed In Green

did children in another scene
make jump rope rhymes of angels
dressed in green

when they leaned too far over the edge
of the poster board sea
we painted tempera dark blue waves

and, quickly, a small boat outlined rose red

on a sky blue cardboard in May, instead
or just before summer
scissored shirt board cut outs

emulating the paper doll sets of birthdays
beloved

never seeing the soft pink sunsets accumulating
as a problem in arithmetic
the recurrences of Spring

as a whittling down of our singing life is but a dream
in rounds where
white candles and the veil implicit

of our childhood dreams

our vows.are Paramount.
I know where they are now
I said to a roomful of scientists in my dream

a convention on  Time 
but they didn't believe me.

mary angela douglas 26 december 2018;rev. 17 january 2019

The Case for Being Made Flower Girls Instead

if  we had been flower girls as we dreamed
we would have thrown rose petals from the choir loft
and the brides would not have complained

to our piano teacher Grandmother en masse
that month of June she played the Wedding March
for so many on the church organ.

or we would have done small ballets during the prelude
in imagined waltz length dresses so pink and lavender and cream...
pinning our corsages on each other

to the glory of Grandmother.

instead they made us the rice girls every time
and we had heard this was for luck
for the bride and groom

and surely we wished them that and loads of pluck
and threw the whole lot, netting and all
though we were small, full force

thinking the harder we threw, of course!
the more that luck would ensue.
and no one else knew at first

why the couple ran so fast
to the awaiting car
the one with cans attached

for the perfect match
a little black and blue
from all the rice we threw

wholeheartedly that day
and never again the same way.

mary angela douglas 26 december 2018;rev. 17 january 2019

Leaving The Maps Unfolded

we lived in train stations
waiting was our forte
for a better something someday

or at least different
God would send it along the track

between assignments 
we never wanted anyway

with maps from The National Geographic
never folded away
they resembled the creases on the moon

I couldn't male room for once they were unfolded

we would have done better, my soul and I
still in the country of the young
to live from cloud to cloud in chiffon prints

not to assume what was assumed in unison
by people of that time

it would have made more sense
everything disappeared anyway
though it seemed so knock on wood solid back then

at least the landmarks, benchmarks should stay the same
not melt away in the rain like my old pink raincoat left on the train not everything onstage has to shift between scenes

do you know what I mean; 

but you know how the philosophers are about that
everything has
too much space in it

to be furnished.

mary angela douglas 26 december 2018

A Christmas Wish Remembered

all winter long in a Christmas day
we dreamed that we could make it stay

my sister and I, no stockings put by yet
but orange and peppermint laden, chocolate coins
in a golden net

and the Christmas Tree in our living room,

live on! not only in our song
though caroling, caroling, schottische too
in our brand new Christmas shining shoes

we danced our dream in the middle of snow,
wished hard, closed our eyes

reciting all the facts we know
of time and its enchantments
oh Christ child cradled in the hay

look down on this our Christmas day
and turn it toward eternity's sway
that we your children, may display

true merriment, forever.

mary angela douglas 23 december 2018;rev. 17 january 2019

I Look Behind

I look behind and then I know
the distances that I have sown
are mine. alone.

each footstep taken in the snows
that melts in faintest winter's glow
is still the way I took one day

though in a place I cannot say
because it's not the same.
yet each, to each God points a way

and there we wander if we may
and though the trail is mystery
it's still our own real history

that none, in truth, gainsays.

mary angela douglas 21 december 2018

Leaving the Great Pronouncements On The Flood

if you're already on the flood, you're safe.
which means, my friend, that they're too late
as if they ever would save you anyway where

words can't hear you, PSA's.
they smile at you and shut the door
behind which villains roar.

but the PSA's are never ending
telling you how they recommend
you spend the last day of the End

they're full of clues
and news and news
but can we make it to the other shore

is the one news piece they all ignore
using up all the air
just to get their market share

just for one more stare at you
through the screen.
or to see and to be seen

while you sort out
what it means
and what remains

mary angela douglas 21 december 2018

To The Waxworks Going Down, The Soul In Flames

[for the poet-playwright, Martin Burke
when an artist dies, worlds go with him (m.d.)]

how sorrowful we were to view his faltering stagecraft at the last
impossible for the skies to remain as blue
or green the waters, mirroring his catastrophe

in the Old Paintings.

in this age, or any other, Icarus, the turning of the page
is hard to take
so near the Sun you came

and then burst into flame plunging beyond Time.
and the world is waxen
and all of it is melting

the whole great waxworks of it all.
leaving us all so small.

mary angela douglas 21 december 2018;rev. 17 january 2019

The Clown In Tears Nor Riding The Rails

[for Emmett Kelly]

I had a dream: Emmett Kelly was sweeping up the light
and never finishing,
staying up all night

still losing his job
or the circus in town and then it's all in flames
and it's raining Emmett Kelly's tears

for years and years.
give us the sad clown, the children cheer
the American Pagliacci murmur no critics 

world weary, bleary. you're still here, The Clown of Depths?

hobo, jester skiing the rails of silence
almost making the train
bearing the cross again some would say

resembling the clowns of Roualt or I say

that tale in the fairybook, remember?

the unaccountable tossing of the golden apples
into the weeping hereafter.
amid uncomprehending laughter

sliding down the glass hills.


mary angela douglas 20 december 2018;rev. 17 january 2019

Perhaps She Was Born To Illumine Small Corners

(to the fairy godmother in all her guises)

perhaps she was born to illumine small corners
to sow sparkles amongst the cobwebs 

bridal finery for the dolls

on afternoons  after all, when she could hardly lift the clouds

managing the lights in majolica, instead; to lighter duties wed:
Shakespearian carriages drawn by moths-
awaiting, a shade melancholy, the will o' the wisp commands;

the sewing trials and the close knotted stitchery, stitches:
between them, no moonlight, her mother said
dark tea, no clotted cream, no princess gaunt

certainly, no spindled dream,.la belle au bois dormant....

for cameo appearances she was well suited
in peach velvet with the magic fishbone
occasional sorties into the hall closet

rummaging sweet ballgowns of a distant age;
turn the page of visions and the songbird flees the cage,
the jewelry of a moment;

memorize Forever,

put away, with the crystal recessionals.
put away from you the garnet inconsistencies
her voices chided

renewing like Yeats
the wands.
the reticent swans

the pale blue legends
of the Easter silk days.

mary angela douglas 20 december 2018lrev, 17 january 2019

Music In Heaven

is this what music is like in Heaven was asked
in a dream where we telegraphed things
with no Telegraph

who can explain a language where
thoughts through the air spun like crystal
intent understood not vocalized the Pearl of

music and weeping mingled
the weeping magnified
Beethoven presiding

still alive it's quieter than a pin
in the world we guard within
we said on earth we shadow said

nothing could match the stillness there

elaborations of the heart, Chopin
gazing out on the vast blue rains, the infinite refrains

is it art lost cities muse, the Muse apart

to each one listening imparts Faure, Debussy
the melting of clouds into cities, Satie
and Mercy. and Pity and Arvo Part, perhaps

starpoint by starpoint, merry go round,
the children's voices like bells, carillions of the Sun
the ladders from the ground and Time is overcome

and Ives is Ives

this is music in heaven no metronome
only the soaring, wind through the pines
evenings, no more

the jay startled, the sifting of swans

say only begin and not become
to begin like snow, and never to end.
who would return from that country, again

mary angela douglas 18 december 2018;rev. 18 january 2019

The Carol To Crystal Towers, Winston Salem, Christmas 2018

I see the downtown civilizations banned
by those with tickets in their hands
to all the glittering soirees

though Im not one to candle gaze
and eat my bread as best I can
and buttered well at God's command

and listening to his sweet leaves blow
around the town where treetops grow
to touch the turquoise skies they love

to boast of to the up and comers here.
have no fear in the yellow castle, tower
set to be banished here at any hour, disposed of.

Be filled with so much Christmas cheer
for shepherds saw a Lovely Light on Bethlehem's plain
and they were poor with the sheep so often in the rain

but it is right
they saw the glory Kings could not.
and I still know He's not forget

the King in lowly manger born
all those still here
the small and worn the ones they'll move to outer space

to own the glitzy downtown space with one accord
He's not ignored

who sees the smallest sparrow fall
and doesn't like the proud at all.

mary angela douglas 17 december 2018

Over The Boughs Of April Floats

over the boughs of April floats
the peach coloured moon
half hid in clouds

the clouds that evening gathered
when we were new
and the singer sings

and as she sings
the peach coloured moon, blooms
blooms unaccountably

it blooms toward music

and the singer makes the stars
a dark azure thimbleful
the birds of evening rise

the world is beautiful in our eyes
a garden enclosed
where our mother sings and the moon

is a flower that blooms or is it half closed

over april boughs
and it means everything to us
no matter how

small we are
we're blooming too
where the song comes through

the skies translucent or are they milk glass vintage
when we ask for stories that are envisioned
and to know in the moment's crystal

as it passed
where is the vase containing the flowering moon.
the place where the music vanished, then.

mary angela douglas 14 december 2018;rev. 18 january 2019

What We Learned In The Blue Winds

we learned the myths, that the winds swirled blue
in picture books long before school we knew
that there was music in the faraway

that summers could be dreamed into
and all was cherries, raveling clues
in folk tales where the heart was new

then mended swiftly with a golden thread
and everything in story books was true
because Grandmother said so

and she knew
and played piano in late afternoons
and Liebestraum and this was beauty

in any key to all that we seemed meant to be
and twilight staining our driveway
purple as arbors in the day that melted

where we would still be lingering if we could;
leave me to remember now.

then it was evening and the stars were ours
and we would dream into the hours
the music of the faraway.

coinage of days and Christmas laden
and folk songs of the towered maiden
and shadows on the flowered lawn

of flowers when they all were gone
their perfumes diffused in garden rain.
and through it all the green refrain

we're turning into day by day
to God's mysterious murmur tuned

when colouring in our pale blue room
or singing to ourselves the songs
occurring in the winter dawns

or in between our dimestore plays
in tinsel arrayed
when time stood still

in a single ray:

gleaming for us in a memorable way
showing the soul's bright underlay,
the music of the faraway.

mary angela douglas 15 december 2018

Over The Boughs Of April Floats

over the boughs of April floats
the peach coloured moon
half hid in clouds

the clouds that evening gathered
when we were small
and the singer sings

and as she sings
the peach colured moon, blooms
unaccountably

it blooms toward music

and the singer makes the stars
in dark azure thimblefuls
the birds of evening rise

the world is beautiful in our eyes

a garden enclosed
where our mother sings and the moon
is a flower that blooms or is it half closed

over april boughs
and it means everything to us
no matter how

small we are

and blooming too
where the song comes through
the skies translucent as glass

when we ask for stories
and to know in the moment's crystal
as it passed

where is the vase containing the flowering moon.
the place where the music vanished, then.

mary angela douglas 14 december 2018

They Always Lived

[for Stephen Vincent Benet;for Walt Whitman]

they always lived filling in the blanks others left alone
breaking from the ranks and from the dream of home, derelict.
mad for treasure, ill fated expeditions;

never doubling back
their hands sifting stardust,
the twilights of violet

and skeletal lack.
I heard them I saw them
I knew they were out there

past Quixote's mills

and in my stillness, gathered my scant will
in my own time to lag behind them;
the diamond dust they had become scattering

in trackless trails, the vanishing point of rails or
in the canyons where one Echo lives
that sieves the soul:

"you are never going back..."

then clues dropped like souvenirs into the plum darkness
and no Christmas where I stooped down and wept
all blue forget me not

and slept the dream they deemed worth more
than anything even when falling as they did
that's how it seemed

from a bent wagon under the last, vast witnessing
of American stars and the night birds trilling;
as though it were apple green Spring...a late love prefiguring'

with the horses' gait stumbling into delirium
into the ravine unforseen the dry gulch withering
where sudden angels gleaned them.

as the snow flies, over the long, long plains
I feel it always winter-wise, the tallowless
heralding; their demise so compassless

and there, near the scrub pines
painted indigo-lamentable, shadowed magenta
my grieved Star

always, I will.

mary angela douglas 11 december 2018;rev. 18 january 2019

Russian Poetry Of A Certain Era

the needle points north, the needle.
but the heart, the heart
can't settle itself

a thousand stories or one play
it's Chekov in summer, Turgenev in May
or starlight trained on the ballet,

cherry orchards, brimming over with nightingales

a stage set, set
laments spelled out for something
not yet named

an ill fated train. a lilac veil
over landscapes of interminable snow;
unfinished, the Wanderers,

no matter where they go;the students with
scores of Mussorgsky under their arms 

court moodiness and the Neva;
the fairy tale spires, the steppes...regret;
the incommunicable mysteries 

Bells of all the years;
in Scythian gold

a drifting cloud, cloud full of tears;
my groundless soul
above History.

mary angela douglas 11 december 2018;rev. 19 january 2019

Russian Folklore At A Glance

the year of our enchantment in the provinces...
this is a folk tale you may recognize on
lacquerware or stenciled on trays

with which you come away through customs
having been served tea with raspberry jam
from an ancient samovar

and everything's clover, so they say
in the mystical guidebooks published in the U.S.A.
as I am snow blinded May to May

in a blizzard of flower petaling trees
by monastery domes;
all the blue and gold or silver unalloyed

of a waning, wedding day
I imagine for a country I'm not from;
but, anyway,

I hear the choirs at sunset hum
in the square it's a Malevich Square
so White Night white on white

where they sing, I sing,
come away,imagining I am a bird
the most folkloric

you ever heard
capable of the finest translations
of the martyrologies

wrapped in a pale blue shawl of a sky
and dying for them all.

mary angela douglas 9 december 2018;rev. 19 january 2019

Maybe We'll Find Lost Cities In The Snow

maybe we'll find lost cities in the snow
and banished Spring, Persephone-
letting go of all we know

for finding things.
no rod, no reel, no magic seal
poised on the letter of a King

letting us through the gates
where others wait already 
friends with doom-

only the let's begin of
the unvarnished page
of the wind;

a few stars crystallized
or barely lamplight
from the long ago

to ease the way.
now that going back
is more than play.

mary angela douglas 7 december 2018;rev. 19 january 2019

The Stars And Other Considerations

ah stars my chandeliers through wind chimes shimmering
above the wide world banded; constellations, blueprints
of Light, His coded love.

how long you have gleamed, seemingly gliding above me
turned on a dial by God in charge of the crystalline, and charged with all

the prisms. we will watch for the borealis, aurora, dawn
what often was praised at the beginning of stanzas,
in prologue

my poems how will you launch into space

among the other poems shining
not in a half-life almost born;
taking your place

among the other songs.

mary angela douglas 7 december 2018

Maybe You Will Be

(for Katherine Laws, who brings things to Light)

toddling toward daylight
maybe you will be
children whom I cannot see

being farther behind you in Time...
even in caves of ebony
darkness sans the jewel work of Aladdin

making your labyrinthine way
seeking even without knowing
deeper wells than we could find.

oh I hope though it may seem
as life goes on, you travel blind
still you may read the braille work on

our tombs, (the designs in more than random snowfall)
who wished for you
what you could not wish for yet yourselves

just beginning to take the books down from the shelf
wanting to know what the fairy tale is all about
that you are in: choose faith, not doubt

the heart that sees

what History leaves out.
and even in midnight circumstance,
contrives to bring it to light!

mary angela douglas 6 december 2018

Things Could Be Worse

will they dole out the sky
with separate charges for the clouds
depending on their colours

so that we no longer have at least
one free view and ceiling still our own
one last perspective on the beautiful

accessible to all, under no controls.

on what those in the past deemed
the Heavens?
things could be worse I thought

waking suddenly from the dream of the End.

mary angela douglas 6 december 2018

The Beautiful, Not The Useful

remembering the days we spoke of the beautiful
not the useful the sky the colour of forget me nots
how could we forget

it seemed the stars never set
and we were all edged in light
and we said, beautiful, beautiful

God was the keeper of dreams.
then we were not in harness
sewing impossible seams

on the hook for crooks and crooks
no longer denizens of the shady nooks
but finding much comfort in books they spoke

of the beautiful not the useful
in another world
light's distances from here

in manifold years and years.


mary angela douglas 3 december 2018

Only Because We Built The Dream Cities

only because we built dream cities by the rivers of dream
were we accounted incompetents, ne'er do wells
forever untrained for success,

obstinate in class genus species

but I, she said I washed my cloth of gold, nevertheless
in the Infinite, where fountains flow from Christ's breast
and gold is gold though the dress is faded

after many washings, the sweet rosebud print...

we were accounted nomads, less than.
retail fodder.

how could we stand
those with no plan. of wayward bent

who studied castles and paid the rent
Always,on the songs of Caledonia
the crenelations.

flip burgers they all said, and
flipping from station to station
on holidays for the nation

you'll get along.

but we had the life of trees
our heads in clouds
barely registered on the GNP

in any Crowd- deemed

less fortunate in Society
with mothball gloves and hats
no requiescat, yet, I smiled at home

and home was God, and we set out
on the fairy tale road
or sent

the orphaned dove of the Ark
from dream sea to dream sea flitting withouten any boat
falling flat off the census in odd years they noted it down

immune, but not to tears and the polarities,
abiding in the Trinity,
having had all our shots

and pot shots taken too or it was
as if we were zoo animals
always on view behind the grille

or in quilted coats visible from the road.
with whatever the leftover cans are on Tuesdays.

generic at the pantries
we have paid our dues
washing our souls by the river of dreams.

not self sufficient sniff the orderlies
the would--be takers in hand.
we are God's merry band.

the ones you dread
since it could be you, instead
as you dread sinking Higher

the Cross that's not for hire
the lilies, the lilies, He said,
beyond all tiring.

mary angela douglas 2 december 2018;rev. 23 january 2019