Being In The World

there must be
another way of being in the world
I must have said to myself as a child

not wanting to depart the shores of childhood.
after seeing Peter Pan, thinking I can,
I can do that too.

keep wearing the same shoe.
the little dress.
and hang my coat on the same hook

reading whatever books I want to.

always the same height as the flowers
the taller ones. maybe the iris; one bright snow sprigged tree.
I will be quiet when they speak to me.

they won't find out I can speak in complex sentences
without even trying.
I'll be steady as a star

over the same backyard forever
in my head.
I'll go to work.

and pay the bills.
and make my bed;
manage my small meals

but in my mind
oh, how I really feel is this:
I'm in the hills

and gathering up blue dusk
the only way I must
the way I always will.

mary angela douglas 31 january 2019

How God Spoke To The Shepherds

how God spoke to the shepherds isn't really noted down
I guess no one thought it could be that important
even though God himself sent his angels there first

and maybe only there. Ever heard a sermon on that,
anywhere? Apart from the Christmas story read entire.
that's how it is  in the world.even now.

God bless the upper echelons
for all their worth
for on this earth

if you're not on the tippy top

nobody cares about your revelations.
could God get into their country clubs I wonder
their vetting churches.

well, His resume looks good on linkedin but
you know He hobnobs with the riff raff.
those shepherds with their staffs.

guess we'll pass this time.

they brought the meeting to a close
and went out into the winter wind.
their duty done.

not a tinker's glance toward the bus station.
not even one
talking of this and that

their last vacations.
sure of their salvation.

mary angela douglas 30 january 2019

The Slamming Of Doors;Its Effect On The Soul

the slamming of doors
the voice raised like a blindsiding dagger
then sunk to a wounding whisper

so there will BE no witnesses

the evil clatter, even of dishes
whatever innocuous thing is at hand
the broken wishes from childhood on.

dear God we try to not let it matter
but it leaves a blister on the soul.
sometimes it shatters worlds

how long must we withstand
the quiet insult hurled
the faint and damning praise

the teaming mockery
the hand in near violence raised
the carefully withheld praise

these secret wars for which we have no defense
that leave no bruises.
beyond relentless and yet

without a single footnote in our History text
while everything else is written, down
to each detail of a King's breakfast on a day

full of pageantry and cheers of multitudes.
the thought we rely on the most year after year
that Father, Son and Holy Ghost

have seen it all and heard it even more
down to the last nerve wrecking echo
of a modulated roar

and somewhere in the vault of Heaven
Ecce Homo woman and child

is it recorded down to the least blow
on the most mild
in letters of searing gold

all the days that we felt small

behind the door
behind the walls
at work or school or home or even in the street

before indifferent strangers
meeting our tiny Waterloos
at the hands of so many

two-faced fools.

mary angela douglas 29 january 2019

God, By The Numbers

proving God by the numbers how could I ever explain

I’ve never been that good with them

but when I see the wind

I feel that it is Him

the dew on the grass

the rain rising and falling continually

the clouds over the sun

the way that moonlight comes and goes

and always has since

I’ve ever known anything at all

and whether the rose

was dreamed by Him or not

Somebody must have thought up

such loveliness

Someone goes with me

more than my shadow

and if He were a shadow

even then He would be beyond

all brightening

Who lightens every life

that comes into the world

says His mysterious Word

beyond all other words,

the most heartening

I will gather all proofs

and scatter them to the wind

And close my eyes

to realize again

the heart knows what it knows

and cannot be convinced otherwise

mary angela douglas 28 january 2019

Air In A Box

here's air in a box! the jester said
the best that anyone ever had.
come live in the box and you will see

the air in here is fresh as the sea
and dusted gold and lily bright
you'll sleep so well

not up all night.
just sign on the line
and you will see

everything breathing was meant to be.

well I looked this way and I looked that
and I could feel it might be a trap
cause just outside in the wind and the trees

I knew well that the air was free.

mary angela douglas 25 january 2019

Transposed. Why Can't I Keep It Straight

I tried to learn the Chinese of boundaries
and inner snows.
the landscapes where the peach skies

recede.
it makes your fingers bleed to weave the nettles
Elise was told in that dream about the swans

the harder side of once upons

someone who knows better interposd
that's the song in another key.
his daughter, for a rose.

the ships wrecked;coming home.

transposed,why can't I keep it straight
when I'm up studying late
the way the lamplight drains

the meteors from the skies.
too hard to analyze
the myth that flies with

the wind
each time that I pretend
I know

how the story goes.

mary angela douglas 24 january 2019

A Sky Made Of Nightingales

a sky made of nightingales alone
so thickly crowded blotting out the stars with music
so that shadows shone, minutiae

this was the feeling of an unsuspected rapture
mauve as saints unrestrained notes spilling out
so that Christmas remained and would not 

leave us.
the meadow forever purple with song
the linnet like, the longing

for the beautiful returned to earth
ever more intricately and
phase by phase, over lavender now

and through desultory haze

the apple orchards fading so their fragrance
alone is evidence.pale pink, cream and billowing
this was the secret gallery of one

as Keats said, long in the city pent
late on the rent, and low on jam
on the way to work on a significantly crowded tram

mary angela douglas 24 january 2019

Whatever Song I Know

angels with their lutes in a foreign dream
strummed in a corner apart 
and I said my heart is made of madrigals, too

the marled seas

can I be here amongst the spangled?
is it the Renaissance again?
but all went silent as a pin

and none of them were dancing.on it.
used to the shut out I resumed
cleaning my housing unit, little rooms

that would never look clean
nor gemmy like those angels
in their opulent green

their Christmas burgundies.
so much for my time machine
the journal entry read

the diamond light had turned to lead

I scrawled in a darker ink.
then went back to the sink
to try again

from that day, some unforeseen name day dropped

out of a cloud

and not on the calendar with the strawberry leaves
I sang Happy Fair over the soap bubbles

and made  a fresh bargain with God 
I'll live in You there's no place else to go
not in any century, status quo

and sing for free
whatever song I know.

mary angela douglas 24 january 2019;rev. 14 may 2021

Losing The Beautiful Language Tear By Tear (revised)

do we live,becoming  the language of the beautiful
or hide under stones
fleeing His presence

in monotone content to get by
devoid of colours and all the whys
wherefores stashed

ccnforming to conform; avoid the lash
or at least, the gossips
demuring to be born and

saying no peacock grace
over His rainbow coded in the waterfall of tears
for all the listless years

not to understand
they skewed your music, being proud
where His footsteps bled into Space

am I allowed
given a trace of former majesty now
the little glow children try to replicate

in words or something

I want to say oh if I may 
kicked out from job to job
at times, from place to place

even then
I don't know how, I didn't
to live discarding the beautiful language

or do we go on, filling in the blanks, a blank ourselves cast down
by every miscast word
that calls us out of place

obscuring the seeing Him face to Face
we were born with-
because the only thing we've learned

from all the jobs we earned is
a heart beaten down by clouds
and how to be afraid.

mary angela douglas 25 november 2018;rev. 23 january 2019

History In Heaven (revised)

in Heaven it wasn't written this way: 

all classroom textbook beef jerky dried

the kings were in the footnotes

even when they died mid circumstance and pomp

in tiny print not even the dolls could read, 

and they could read...oh such a romp

the artisans were tired

and tuckered under the shade trees

(from being that organized.) 

and purple testaments belonged

to the gilly flowers, 

to daydreamed hours

and Audubon led the choirs.

lest we forget

the farmer's almanac inset

with silver moons

and the whens to plant strawberries

illuminated like old manuscripts; 

recipe clippings cut and saved

in newspaper columns

from a distant age

for Lady Baltimore Cake

oh everything that quaint

and other sundries from

the fancy catalogues, the wish upons

could be had for a song

just by gazing at the page

by those called average, civilians

riff raff in their Time On Earth, 

wow! 

in silver spooned rebirth

imagine that Heaven gleamed

for the ragbag sorters

and diffident daughters

with the miffed in dimwit quarters

looking on, in their petulant dawn at

angels in the corners of antique maps

helping their ships set sail

the ones they said would fail

in the small ponds

and under the bridge

with swan carvings

where the children played

the game called

Former Days

as they were remembered by the

poets exiled

elaborating on jade trees; 

how it felt then in Tivoli

when the opal winds blew

the stars' clear panes out of the skies

make way make way for Apple Pie

Applique and the ladies painting china

subsidized in crummy retirement homes

and it came their time to die.

all Heaven knows, even if you don't

you can quote me: 

that to welcome them

all Ages folded, then

into one Dantesque Rose...

mary angela douglas 30 november 2018; rev.23 january 2019

You Barrel Through Your Lists Of Things To Do

you barrel through your lists of things to do
feeding the ghosts of cats mysterious cream
while life like a ticking dream moves on

and you are caught in that stream
my heart, you ancient valentine
no matter what you wish

or you opine
dining on cheese and crackers to get through
with everything by noon;

creasing the folds in the wonderland blue
continuing to be you, you think you can
live on till dawn task after task

brushing aside the inconvenient wings
of colours floating in,
from the Unseen

to fall gardenia petaled in the grass

when God keeps giving you hints
in a starry, mixed up tense even while you sense
the sunflower clocks are sequin weeping a

Gold that cannot last.
not forgetting the gears of light
the zinnias meshed

the fireworks over the parks
in stops and starts
all morning glory, the pier glass folds

though ever the clouds are new,
the year freshly painted:

I dreamed that we were snow
and were not cognizant.

I would make lists of roses, now, of aureoles
if I could remember:
faint, on a manifest of silver

all the names.
or process all the claims.
making a note in distinctive handwriting

of how it feels to bloom
when you come late to the afternoon
all Alice at the garden door,

remotely elegiac.
the wrong size, always.

mary angela douglas 23 january 2019

Goodbye to the Toys;We Say Sorry To The Bears

to Kenneth Grahame

back in the kingdom of what you left behind
under a meadow roof of eglantine or a rosy arch
in an orchard forgot in years of rains

dolls still hold out outstretched arms
almost feeling pain

let me make it plain
little trains still miss their tracks
jumping ropes their jumpers

disjointed are the cheerful, painted
jacks
in the boxes that can be cranked no more.

ghostly the nursery floors
have turned to clover or they have
mouldered

here rest those you left behind
not knowing it was over
still dreaming you may return to find them.

once when you went away
not knowing you were gone to stay
you parted company

with these
the faithful in the breeze
who missed you so

among the hum of bees
as if they were flowers
gone to seed

you'll see them in Paradise
and be pleased and so will they,
some far off day

and play play play play play.

mary angela douglas 20 january 2019

While Filling Out Forms She Thinks Of Other Things

it's rhapsodic and it's built to last, my dream boat
veering into the shoals of the deeper Past
without apologies

oh I see said the agencies
seeing nothing at all.except-
the nothing fills out forms

and it is small
maybe they won't call it back
maybe they can sit on a tack it's

knowing it is not born for this.
that nothing is me
still in the dream of

used to be and should be now.
and stubborn in the quest
and fairy tale endowed; 

still, the guest of God.

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

From A Strawberry Sky /Too Long At The Fair

I want an ice cream :come she wailed

the little girl in flounced pink at the end of her day

not knowing really what she wanted was sleep

and with only the one thing she could say

I want an ice cream come, I doooo

and I imagine her guardian angels

would have moved heaven and earth

not to mention all the moo moos in the field

just to scoop one out for her, double dipped,

from a strawberry sky.

mary angela douglas 18 january 2019

She Also Was True

who wouldn't love the die cut paper castles,

paper snowflakes snipped, the mirrored pond
reflections of a pink tulled dancer

on one leg standing in an old story;
one leaden soldier to wait upon.
being made of paper not much was left to chance

a misplaced wind, an uncertain dance
a gust from a hearth ablaze and
the end of storied days, snip snap.

these are the happenstantial ways
Hans Andersen furnished
for a paper valentine

to those farther down the line.
where the leaden soldier
never loses nerve

but is captive to a breeze
and the dancer at attention too
in the end

we rue.
though she also,
was true.

mary angela douglas 15 january 2019

I Smile Into Far Distances

why couldn't it be that way
the way we thought it would
that we would find our playhouse

in the woods like a fairy tale cottage
marked for us alone
and with the doll size baby tea set

done in small roses.
there we would remain the children
and mama the mama the mama

and grandmama grandpapa too
the worlds we knew at first
without the bubbles bursting

rainbow's sheen floating forever in the backyard
sunlight dappling everything.
I know somewhere it must be true

behind the gumball machines,
in the old shopping center
inside the nesting worlds forever new

inside the present, yet another
star flecked tissue Christmas
evergreen as before.

you think I am naive
and you deplore that in me.
maybe you do

but I smile into far distances, queen,
anthropologist of the faint gold thumb printed clues.

mary angela douglas 15 january 2019

The Pause In The Music: What It Means

there's a pause in music only one discerns
that one must endure through blizzards
gathering the shadows of violets

so that Spring may descend
after long Ages
so that children may turn

the fairy tale page in books
saying again, with wonder lit,
is this true?

mary angela douglas 15 january 2019

Can The Wind Breathe

can the wind breathe
through ice crystal beading on the trees
when currents of air are stilled above the town

in an overcast dream, sparkleless and clean
the ground greening and window glimpsed,
we could say in a drowsy way

it's ice orchards, only resembling Spring or
may it be the trees' precognition settling the matter
or that we are here in a season we do not recognize

Spring from a tower window spied like the Snow Queen
sees Spring, as only the ice crystallized into flowers
still frozen are the hours

I guard; white roses too she said viewing the
petals melting into the ground
no honey for the silver bees.

no nectared music.

mary angela douglas 13 january 2019

Different Than We Were Before

(to my Grandmother Lucy W. Young
and my very musical sister, Sharon...
and to Gramp, the best Gramp, Milton B.("Mutt" Young)

we may have planned to connect the dots in workbooks
or in purple mimeograph watching them become
flowers, leaves, constellations the dolls never heard of

this would be additional work but we were happy to do it
knowing it must lead us somewhere different
than we were before

outward from the penciled labyrinths
the simple crosswords, riddles just for fun
spelled out in languid Saturdays after chores were done

and mystical movies,that Hershey Bar
popcorn freedom,
trifling with sets and subsets off and on

clearly without the nets of the lady in strawberry pink
circus tutus using the sun
as a reference point, the northward moss on trees

calculating these: parabola, parasol, what you please by
sunset, moonrise gifts of the numbers, One in gold

meaning prime but we're in the after time
of school where the sundial rules the shade
with the metronome at home

and music runs on in the piano studio
twirling the stool
because Grandmother's pupils are diligent

and love their Mendelssohn.

counting the threads on the vivid spools
we occupy ourselves with her sewing basket
the tiny gold thimble tisket or tasket,

and we are the thieves of the golden eggs she says
when she is vexed 
scolding us through fairy tales so that beauty

is never a wasted opportunity nor

the stairs from note to note she taught us
that we will use long after she's gone
when they have wounded our once upons

hearing that music still, not missing
the northward moss on trees

on and on
connecting the dots from star to star
and not that far from it now:

from finishing off the last spinning wheel
in the last castle
thereby saving the Princess,

the Kingdom of whole notes replete with
beauty cascading everywhere
through the grace notes too

a few of them sostenuto,
sustaining
the worlds we knew then

that still are new and

back to back and sidewalk crack to crack
with the narrow passage through
rose garden to Rose Garden.

when we're through
we'll bring her back the best bouquet
the intricate piece done well and

marked with a golden star, the memory
of who we are at the core Whose Music is
leaving us, somewhere different

fording the rivers of dream-
than we were before.

mary angela douglas 12 january 2019;rev. 13 january 2019

Stranded

so that evasive beauty would not leave us behind
counting the game piece coins they gave to us for lousy compensation

so that each would become a separate nation, country

in the soul's inner choirs, free
we have spent everything to the last penny
remembering these:

those who as Dickinson said died either for beauty or truth
it being one sum, or lit the lamp for the others to come later
leading the knight to falter on his way, to stumble but then to see:

those who died of grief without beholding the Grail
who could not prevail where he steps now, with ease
or those who pondered the moon, having no ladders then,

only yearning, leave.
it comes down to this in a world of commerce. sin
that goes on and on tearing us from home

leaving us stranded

either you stop and listen for the song of ages
or you live abandoned and beauty flees
and what was given you fades, and then the flame goes out

not knowing its own name
still less, the lanes of God.

mary angela douglas 9 january 2019

Into The Blue

into the blue their thoughts have gone
clouded, into the marble of Time
I cannot find them;

can you- all their fountaining words-
the perfume of their language, turning;
then they asked sadly, did they, how

could we bury their Spring.
o child my child they sing, it's so far away;
like a harp's glissando; gold flakes

off of the sun into the heart unwon,
I know their phrases lilies were;
wreathed of forgotten flowers;

float on forgotten waters! I cried
to the Unseen
in an unknown tongue.

perhaps their work was done
leaving no clues, used up
leaving the empty cup its filigree

more, than it means to me lost questions
when oh why did the way they looked at things
melt like a dream

beyond angelic recall.
ghosts of the lecture hall.
we must look so small through their vast telescope now

that crystalline point of view
when all the stars were new that now are faint.
or feigned.

does anyone know
what to do
gazing into the blue after them?

mary angela douglas 7 january 2019

Yevtushenko In Heaven Was Said To Have Said

yevtushenko in heaven was said to have said
it's the beginning not the end of colours as we knew them
and Anne Frank here, here where it is always April I commend

so many old friends with halos
please tell my students this is what I meant
all this

but here the vision fades...
and we are left to ponder in the afternoons
what is the life of poets after their doom is unsealed

and forgotten by God, the seventh angel or the eighth...
they no longer tread the earth;
their poems float pinkward, home.

mary angela douglas 6 january 2019

An Angel in Coral Or Carmine Headlong

an angel in carmine or coral or most intensely rose so
headlong appeared behind a lacework's winter branching of trees...
cloud angel, I whispered it seems this January, snow soft, aloft

our God is already showing off .
as a child I would have sought
that angel in pastels, chalks in vain

oh Heaven must be where all His paintings remain
on all the skies ever made, coming and going
and all aflame and never burning down

at least, I dream of it that way
whenever Glory comes to town.

mary angela douglas 5 january 2018

Blue Gardens

lost in blue gardens
on the edge of time
we gathered late hyacinths

happy in the waning of the light
with supper time near,
the house within in creamy lamp light drenched:

a subject for numerous paintings
over various, the suburban years
the lemon glow of windows seen

against the faded blue outside,through screens,
the yards of lavender, besides;
turning to that house I want to go

in my light slippers woven of what seems-
gathering again the blue flowers, the shading dreams
the dusk of once upons,

with all that we knew then of life
by thimble fulls, faintly,
of music back then, literature of the piano

the pine tossed winds
with the picture window we thought would always
be ours:

close, onto the vaster, water coloured blue
beyond the swing set mystical in evening dews
where the moon was an opal fete

that we cannot forget: through clouds
the feeling in music then, unexplainable
mounting sapphire winged, unattainable

as Chopin's fourth ballade
melting into the blueness
of everything

I dreamed we could get there by dawn
brushing aside the implausible,
just crossing a lawn

toward the gardenias.

mary angela douglas 4 january 2019

Sometimes, In The Absence Of Light

for the Russian Filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky

sometimes in the absence of light
we imagined the sun
collected through secret prisms
as if you were the only collector left
in a film by Tarkovsky.
there the leaves grow sodden
through black and white scenes
yet insistently they whisper, Come,
the Zone is breaking apart
as though it were a heart 
while you evade its gates, your natal star;
and you've become they'll tell you, every one,
the last known weather vane spinning
among the dreamers of dreams.
there Time has split its silver seam
and runs on
into the measures
where the Listeners have come
into their own.
into late landscapes occluding the moon
there your waylaid vision shone 
on the lost coordinates of where you are
in the Dream Time vouchsafed you.
there the small comets weep
into the borrowed mirrors of the fleet,
are we that handful of stars?
and you are only a quarter note asleep in the music
of a beautiful egress
when with your childhood pail
you hurry to where They are
looking for little diamonds smashed

there where the Ark of dreams
has not yet come to rest;
it one day, will


mary angela douglas 4 january 2019