So Many Singing Birds

I loved the pinwheel breezes, tufting clouds
the clover cream and purple tufted below, the earth,
an echo of the sky

my only country till I die

and then the ones in books
strange geographies, enchantments, look!
alchemies forever turning us into gold,

rose gold, white gold the story told, the myriads
the rose red rose white soliloquies
what are you what are you

turning to be while the windmills grind
the darkness into light
the sands of mystic time run through

Senor Quixote's dreams, the dolorous.

like him, I loved books too,
their after mirages...my affinities
the ones with winding steps and

and their infinities,
plateaus of flowers

the knights and ladies of the hours
upon their fretted stage and page by page
the thick rose borders grew, I cried at the

half steps in music, Grandmother, with you

all castles slept. when will we awaken
what will we awaken to:
when we wandered through, so many vignettes

in a cloudless country far from the neighborhoods
we knew

and yet so clear in notes of blue on the staff line:
mazurkas of the printed word

how can it be so much is still unheard;
there are so many left
within us in the waning light:

so many singing birds

mary angela douglas 7 september 2019