The Beautiful Heartbreak

it's the beautiful heartbreak seen from Space
like snow that's driven from place to place
as if in exile once again

from the bitter winds that Winter sends
and we are sheep without a fold
or we are ships without a hold

and carry love in vagrant hands
to God our friend through shifting lands
and fall and stumble on the way

as Him who bore the Cross that day
who sees in us though we can't say
His heart live on in smaller ways

thus we draw courage from His well
though all on earth should turn to hell.

mary angela douglas 30 june 2019

Stone Gardens

I have been where people turn  to stone
dissolving into landscapes of their own
then called a gipsy I moved out

or I was thrown.
you know, it doesnt matter either way.
light comes back another day.

you look at the stars
as others did before you
knowing there is something else

if only you could find it in some book on the shelf.
no neighborhood feels familiar
countries keep changing borders

there is law and order
whatever that means.
occasionally the screen is lifted

from the Great Oz.
gold is sifted.
there's a pause

and you drink your tea
reading the signs.
and sigh, Thy Will,

not mine.
knowing the saints are looking on.
whatever happens

to right or wrong.
you only wanted to drift among the flowers
but all you see is the drive toward power.

the ones weeping in its wake.
whom God cannot forsake.

mary angela douglas 29 june 2019

GOODBYE MY JEANNE (REPOSTED FROM MAY 9, 2018 DUE TO FAULTY LINK)

[For Jeanne D'Arc]

that is the fairy tree, the holy tree for certain
she breathed as though she spoke in cloud language
only God could hear; the other children having departed

now the silver edged angels,
the twilight ones appeared
when the stars were ensconced

not quite yet, the honeyed candle of her soul is lit.
ahead lies a future;
not of clouds.

Michael, Catherine, Margaret within the hour
appearing to the clear eyed child
who must speak truth to Power

the one her visions forge that indicate
the road that she must take
and all her meadowed dreams forsake,

leaving the fairy tree behind

packing only her one wool dress
the one on Sundays worn
her prayer book perhaps; could she read?

only the missal of her dreams
she is fanciful her mother said
after she'd gone, self willed they said

not right in the head and there was rage
at the turning of a page while
the cobwebs of the dawning grasses
served for a halo of sorts, for Joan.

a covering

sweeping into God, destiny, the fire...
a heart of resolve.

only the tree knew her best
where she confessed she loved God only
and the tree whispers  and would have shed every leaf

and oh, for very grief (the fairies said) and the tree

though newly leafed sensing not far from here, 
her last breath on the winds
sensing it would see her when

it also,brandishing newly and with its pearlized

flowerets would be let into the lobbies of Heaven would bloom again
heavy with birdsong, jubiliant.

this marked her now, goodbye my Jeanne...
to the once upon Kingdom

that ring around the moon.
my halo, my small Queen.
goodbye to life, to what has been

farewell, for honour's sake
pursue without turning back
the Divine trajectory.

for all of History.
For Love itself.
and nothing else.

mary angela douglas 10 may 2018;30 may 2019

What Will Remain

someone is scavenging the cherubs and the chimes

from my valentines

they know who they are

or maybe they don't

since they can't make their ditties gleam

using my soap.

my chimes don't migrate

my cherubs likewise

my cherry tree carol

has no disguise

your scamming intent's

a bum's enterprise.

allusive birds nestle

and the pink doves too

as they did before,

very far from you,

all thieves of words, of lilt and rhyme

your ink is stained and it's a crime

to no avail

for what in my poems

will prevail.. because I draw

from wells of truth

and beauty too; and do not loot.

mary angela douglas 28 june 2019

Walkout

well, letters just walked off the page I was only half way reading
they were tired of forming the word "change'
especially without any modifiers

more than sick of the word "revolution"
where were the colours?
the months of the year

the Book of Hours
with pictures, illuminated

and "ruminated".

can anyone hear me say this
or do they just dismiss
this regicide of words

ah, beautiful beautiful I said,
coaxing them back
and opal, and opaline

pearlescent
they began to stream, shyly, to the corner of the page
when all is said, ah, roseate, roseate

words started eating off my plate,
and it was gold

there's violet, eglantine when all is told
they started forming little alphabet hearts
and tuning up their strings

when I said: clouds, wings, the moon outloud
the shine on everything
and kingdom, kingdom, come

when you were young
and naming all the beauteous,
one by one.

mary angela douglas 28 june 2019

On The Mirrors Of Arvo Part And His Departures (Second Version)

yesterday you wrote

inscribed and ever inscribing

in the pooling of mirrors

crushing the kaleidoscopic colours

of feelings past music into an undiscovered realm

or as if angelic beings held enormous

mirrors reflecting music back

from its beginning in a universe

we could not know or forgot that we knew

or were we driven in fear from the yard of gold
by the dogs with eyes as enormous as teacups, windmills
in a neighborhood of sounds distressed
compressed our hearts, boiling with the lids on tight

so that you alone guessed and then took note

in notes as rare as certain birdsong at night
did you wake to hear? sheer

refractions of the rose, the violet, the forest shards
ah children turn again, you whispered, Christmas uncle
that you are

and then it works

the battered toy, the hidden borealis, star
no longer receding

and in your midnight watches so composed

beyond the guarded borders of our sighs

of the whirling angels, list! that we all stood still

a kind of requiem in ourselves and then, the glorias

weeping that this music filled

an ache in the soul

never before comprehended

mary angela douglas 2 october 2016;rev.23 january 2018;28 june 2019

White Jade (Second Version)

[translated from assorted baby languages…]

to P.L. Travers for her chapter “John and Barbera”

in "Mary Poppins"… (I did not forget)


he said I have a pearl-handled stillness

to sell you, clocks with vanilla moons and

suns inlaid.

curious bubble-gum,emerald

or amethyst rings in just your size;

broken glass from the gumball machine.

a Cracker Jack prize.

a few chess pieces under a valentine sky;

on brown paper, your earliest shadow traced;.

an eggbeater churning the colours in the clouds.

and if this fades,

the maps where silvered ships slipped through

and no one drowned.

striped candy.

a rhymed song merrily sung. and cherrily,

peachly. plum.

the wind through wild grasses; gift-wrapped,

the jeweled meridians…choose.

I said I’m in a painting by Currier and Ives;

the sky’s forever lemon, streaked with violet jam

when what I really want oh what I am

is the Impressionists-

and to live in a thatched house

arranging lilies in a pale blue vase

that doesn’t tip over.

already the hour glass is breaking apart-

so that I’m the one and only

holding onto blind grace and

sifting these pink sands;

hauling the jar of peach bright pennies home

and shaking the glass globe twice on Sundays

so that snowfall swirls;

still,somewhere, in the world.

and this is for the last ones in the Park

who forgot to wave as I

rounded the corner-

too sequined-charming or bundled up

to know that some choice diamonds.

leaves and flowers go

never snagging at all

the glint of lilac

in the snow child’s snood…


where are they? would you tell me, if you could

that they are wreathed forever in an enchanted wood.

there God is. He won’t topple over.

soon you may want nothing but melting, too.

moire end papers rose-threaded through-

for the white jade stories

you can’t read yet

sorting the ashes from the please

(whispered my Mother filtering

sunlight through the trees…)


mary angela douglas 15, 19, 21, 24 june 2012;27 june 2019

Does Light Grow

does light grow, does it have roots 
can it become, does it have shoots
is it restless like a stellar tumbleweed
,
does it need more or float like a pond lily

it seems to me
it only Is. beyond all shores known and unknown
a kind of benificence on its own, an attribute of God

that if flows not only to the green tendrils
though we cannot see it do so
sometimes a net caught

on the waters
threaded with gold, light appears to be
the shining of the Sea

which could not shine alone

a blue line in a green wave approaching

I dreamed like Dante
Light was a rose
forever unfolding

scented like stars
or snow.
I dreamed it was healing us so

in our sleep
even through unaccountable weeping

and when,
we arose.

mary angela douglas 25 june 2019

EPIPHANY OF THE WHITE APPLES

fr Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam
to the music of Messian's Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus

I don't know why white apples in the frost

seem suddenly to sob;

reading Mandelstam three in the morning,

I dreamt of God, His marred meridians and pearl;

upwards where the gnats swirl angelically

lighter than the air they almost dwell in;alighting on

the purple lines dividing these geographies, my dusks,

may clouds float, swanlike then, bright dust,
in the ballet cirrus of Akhmatova

in an in-between time. I try to rhyme

Him with something else, deeply felt

but it's too cold

where after decades throw an arced lights’ lost and emerald shine

as if they know

this Neva is not mine.

and who am I

to make my petitions here

on the other side of the world, the room, I fear

assorted people will not believe

I do love Russian poetry;

where the moon is made of glass.

will it shatter at last? will I

the milk bright pieces hold in a wounded perigee

I ask like a child from a hand towel embroidered

folk tale. not my own.

God knows I’m bound up in the story though

I won't turn and become salt...if that’s your worry

“it's not your past”, a thin murmuring grows,

how do you know I plead to no one heeding me

what words came to me in a midnight hour

and laid down their shields

or that the blanched petals fleet so lingeringly by me

on this heavy darkness, sown

as an antique honey, scarcely bottled.

I don't know why

white apples in the frost...

made me cry unto the light vexed distances:

sheared seraphim may guard the long scars

lightly felt now, the buzz of

summer flies; soul freedom's reedy tunes so

lemon starred.

no longer die. oh live jewel jangled as

Christmas hymns to the infant Jesus should be.

one candle grown lilac in a perpetual Spring

precariously I perch among worlds and

So.

they sigh, it's you again and

won't even let me in

for the dress ball, seemingly less than Cinderella,

packing one useless shoe

I’ll look within

wandering down Mandelstam Avenue,

a quarter note's brimmed with wonders and

remote viewing as through a screen of ancient snows, all

things being foreign, suddenly parted

on a mysterious stage, oh Star, my star

where I, unaccountably, not knowing where You are

but in a blinding Grace

have all the parts by heart.

mary angela douglas 10 september 2016/3 january 2019;24 june 2019

I Know You Will

I know You will catch me whenever I fall
into the nets of Your delicate provision
whenever I envision

the world as it was before.
before when you were dreaming
of the colour green

of the canopies of trees and clouds.
before You said one word of leaves, aloud
when Light was a thing unseen.

and wished for, by the angels.

I will remember with You
the notebooks on birdsong
please

going back to those scenes:
Eden before the ruin.
looking for mushrooms

and the tiniest flowers
spellbound for hours
in the green shadows.

in the plum's purest stain.
the benison of rains;
Orion.

mary angela dougla 22 june 2019

CHOOSE

To Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

we'll skate on the wind if all else fails
and bring the stars back in pails
so they won't glaze over

saving the orange groves, too

building the Spring from mementos
oh, all the fading blossoms lest
they fade from memory too

they will say we are negligent
not attending to present business
unaware, fiscally unsound

but there is a crystal stair in every poem
or installation, Kabakovs proved.
others, too.

we can go up them if we choose

or we can stay here.
in a cloying weariness, wilderness bonded.

mary angela douglas 22 june 2019

Peppermint Stick Revue

we were going to wear flowerdy dresses all the time
all the time
when we grew up

and rhinestone necklaces
every bit as good as diamonds
we reasoned back then

when we were almost twins
because, on special occasions
our Grandmother dressed us that way

we could play the day away
and under moonlight too
make up stories if they would have let us

do that.
we just crammed more in to the next day.
now I think

you know, that's not a bad way to live
as I smooth my flowerdy dress down
and eat more ice cream

than you could shake a peppermint stick at.

mary angela douglas 21 june 2019

Cloud Song To William Blake

don't be afraid walking on waters
a small voice chimed
perhaps from a charming cloud

as painted by Blake
seen walking on the Thames
and singing brilliant hymns

when the not so sanguine tygers
burned in the night.
is it indelible I said?

hoping it was so.
all those illuminations,
long ago.

and the angels blurred in trees
in watercolours, please.
oh all of these and the sick rose healed

and all that we can feel

when dreaming of his pastorales
and the New Jerusalem.

mary angela douglas 21 june 2019

Make It Turn Out That Way

it should have been the letter to the king
I dropped in the tisket or tasket
in the green and yellow basket

in the thrush bright spring
with seven kinds of sealing wax
banded with gemmy rainbows

buttercups, someone said
under the chin.

and someone would have found it
wrapped it up in tissue
and sent it on right then

because we dreamed it that way
everytime we were swinging into the clouds
and Grandmother said, come in girls,

it's going to rain.
then we were going to live in a house
with rose patterned wallpaper

and a thin green stripe
another of pure silver on each panel.
but the letter wasn't delivered.

I dont know what happened that day.
call it fate, an unsatisfactory story.
but we still dream of glory;

morning glory, stay

and in the retelling,
make it all turn out that way.

mary angela douglas 20 june 2019

Confused, Tangled With Starlight

{to Jesus, the Light of the World]

did the dark illumine the corners where you were
confused, tangled with starlight
no longer sure of its demesne

how could it remain the same
in the presence of true Light
perhaps the Magi wondered

in their flight from Herod
warned in dream.
it takes centuries to gleam

what else did Rembrandt mean by mingling
dark with light so that it seemed
alchemical, all of it, gold

waiting to be born.gold petticoat showing through
the funereal.

Light shines the scripture says
in darkness
darkness does not understand

why suddenly

it is embroidered with marigolds
and the children are singing it hymns.

mary angela douglas 20 june 2019

Sadness Comes In Waves I Said

sadness comes in waves I said
they closed the door
leaving me to wander near the shore

of it
captive to the day of writing me off
like a bad debt.

they did not care that the ebb and the flow of it
seeped under their door, and marled, and beautiful
as disastrous

pooled in the well waxed hallways, lapped at the balconies'
recreational edge.
my pledge I have kept

windswept

ridiculed, words skewed slightly sideways
by the knowing smiles.
I dont know what they know.

or how they tally up the miles.

God keep me safe.
under no bitter moonlight  nor escape.
unmined. with no resort but You

oblivious to the time we live in
they think they've wasted with me.
in the palace of your mercies,

with my small candle lit.

and Infinite.

mary angela douglas 18 june 2019

Who Keeps Singing It

13th Reflection on Kabakov

the things you had learned
while whirring among the stars
as if in a landscape by Dore

Dante's Dore commit to a piece of paper
in the teeth of such a wind
you may later, said the angel

the one with furry wings
the one that held your gaze
and splintered in Cezanne

precisely the blues from the greens
it isnt sequestered really
where you live

expounding the clouds
making up small messages to send
welcoming the white winged things forlorn

into the winter corners on the canvas

let words fall like glass
on a stage of permanent stars
the mirror image reversed

so that we walk on skies
and have for a roof, the earth


the paper torn
in the teeth of such a wind
begin with small crayons...

in an abandoned field
someone has tossed golden apples almost everywhere
only I don't know who

keeps singing it, this way
so that I continue hearing
the music without the words

the petaling ones free falling
from the far balconies.

mary angela douglas 18 june 2019

Three Birds Arose In A Rose Dawn

three birds arose in a rose dawn
and I looked on, their summer witness
as in an alternate history, dreamed;

perhaps the only one to think
are we on the brink of something rubied in the world
a cusp of gold, and sonar on the wind

never to see it, hear it again, to feel in a velvet course
with the selfsame feeling, with hidden words conveyed
their flight, and flickering

I saw from my particular starting gate in life, thus far,
a certain way I could not replicate now
and in a green wondering, wondered

as if in a wood on the first page of the tale

were they the presage or the message itself;
how could I know that day were they boon or blight
or for that instant only, in a never repeating Universe,

more than Light itself

mary angela douglas 17 june 2019

Upon Their Banished Names

for Thomas Graves

folded down and no one's now
the poets oh of no renown to you.
why do we bury them again...

vow to vow and each to keep
I mourn their prolonged winter sleep
their springtime tread

upon the pages that I read
only decades ago.
so decreed the powers that be

the assumed, so assuming literati

that they should become no reverie even.
in season or out jeered by those with clout.
even our Shakespeare conscripted

to serve, the propagandist's lack of verve.
still, not for me their soul's lost foam and the long retreat.
sad vigil I will keep with Whitman, Poe

Dickinson, the best to know.
Keats and Shelley bright as beams
upon the unresting, forlorn seas

no more, the ships of gold.
oh find their valentines again
I whispered to a modern wind, an age

that stole what e'er they knew and trashed it
academic room to room.
think that you shall find again

in purple ink, such hearts to win

you know it isn't true.
languid at the cafes, parlez vous
anything but shame, riotous laughter

upon their banished names.
reclaimed.

mary angela douglas june 14, 2019

Some Summer

we'll go spend every pirate coin at the carnival

and then come home to tea

with little pink cakes

how would that be

we spoke to the empty cupboards for her sake

willing them to become

suddenly magical, all twinkly

and fling themselves open to reveal

pink cakes and more

apple core Baltimore

jingle bell time

and one shaded moment

for the wild violet surmise

we feel, while on appeal.

oh close the screen door

cause they all want to be

the one and the only

queen of the white honey

they only come to steal

and the causeways brimming

with gipsies...can't you just feel it...

or skate on moonlight, plum dusted

who is there to stop you

in the carport

at least in dreams with their bicycle bells

and the evening in violet seams

comes down

it all comes down

in blue taffeta.

still needing to be hemmed

said Grandmother, magical Grandmother.

her mouth all full of pins.

mary angela douglas 12 june 2019

The Last Word That You Said

I dreamed that poetry was the last word that you said
the one that had broken off, broken off starlight and
fallen by the road

and it had taken root where no one knew
and broken into bloom
and had become a vast tree

some said the tree of night made more beautiful
with the moon behind clouds and moonlight, then,
imagined.

moonlight then imagined it was poetry too
as there were no singers left who would sing that
when called upon to sing

in storerooms where the dead arts are kept, 
in the attics of beauty long neglected
where children go to play

when it rains, when they are disconsolate,
to discover they still can wear it
though it doesn't fit them yet:

moonlight, the yard, and the blossoming blossoming Tree.

mary angela douglas 12 june 2019

CANTICLE FOR ROBIN WILLIAMS (revised June 10 2019)

CANTICLE FOR ROBIN WILLIAMS

[for Robin Williams (July 21, 1951-August 11, 2014)

"Nought but vast sorrow was there -- 
The sweet cheat gone"

-from Ghost, by Walter De La Mare

dreaming in colour with our eyes wide open
we thought we heard them say that you had fled
oh no oh no oh no we cried we cried we cried

the fool in motley wiser than all kings is dead
by his own hand and we the starless witnesses of the news
and snows bled snows in summer, shock by shock

in California, spreading clockwise fault line by
fault line: can't you make it disappear, sad conjurer,
dear robin, making amends?

but this, this the thing that can't be mended
by a sudden sortie of your hidden angels
fraught with the tinkling of bells on the jester's

cap no more, though doffed and doffed again, to us, before
as if we were royalty in a velvet box
convulsed with happiness; zig-zagging

lightening quick, mercurial, ariel ariel
why, what- is this?
last seen at 10 p.m. on sunday night, and at home..

(yet not at home)
and the fairytale
decreed with its happy ending:

let it be 10 p.m. on a sunday always-
didn't it? or earth, earth has skipped its heartbeat;
honey ceased its sweetness,

captain crossing now, crossing the ragged line-
never coming back this time cross

rainbowed meridians, scarves pulled out of the hats
as if from the borealis, wonderful! and multifaceted,
the doves of extravagant wit flew up from the silk top

hats towards what, towards whom,
towards when you're
jumping off the shortest cliff of all, o Lear, come back
come come back they must be wrong...

the laugh lines in the moons of distant planets dim-
oh were you Hamlet in the end, mad Lear-
the one we thought we knew send not to know

to know to know for whom the bell has tolled
has tolled has tolled has laughter ceased
and music spilling from the soul oh jigsaw piece

my favorite one! exclaimed the child in us
all unconsoled:
is merriment weeping unregaled?

ah, Genie, out of the bottle now, murmured
the Academy.
o tenderest of clowns

we will not find you though
the puzzle's strange without you
fretting upon no stage at all that we can see.

the hour was golden, seized,
but it has raveled,these, our revels...

dies, laughter on the lips of God for
this brief shining,
now

mary angela douglas 12 august 2014;10 june 2019