I'm Stitching Down The Words You Gave Me Lord

I'm stitching down the words you gave me, Lord
from  earliest dictionaries of sun and rain
the rose garden reverie, the Plains

the crescendos of the wind
snow under glass and shaken
into Christmases,

I pray

let them not abscond with them again
as the magic carpet I have traveled on since
You know when

since earliest days could be
yanked from me, leaving me to shift
it all to inwardness and start again but when

leaving me only the free fall
into eternities where
how can I do anything

but cloudlike, speak your name through starless air
once they have taken then
the particular language

you gave only me and filched
the golden apples from the page, the orchards
brimmed with snow in winter or Spring

gone completely gone
and the new worlds

that vowels formed in just Our way
the glow of consonants like comets
signaling the end

and still, my Joy! the forgeries won't win
the beginning Alpha
where bright words begin.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2019