So What If We Threw Words Into The Air

so what if we threw words into the air
repairing nothing
they were all we had

aspirant jugglers that we were
but sometimes merry
spinning our plates

while Time waits at the Gate,
the garden one.
beyond it are the Fates

spinning the gold of Shakespeare,
Keats, the clarion greens of Rilke,
all those letters.

from high towers he called the angels
and his words grew little wings
and they have gone so far

into my heart
as to become a landscape
littered with stars.

we wrote in cloud breath on the panes
of Christmas;
punctuated in offices on our own

keeping the dream of appled home
amid the tiny exiles.
the sword upraised from the Lady's lake.

brush your rosebud tears away
for what seems to have come to you

too late. the amber birds of Mahler rise
to stay your executions.
maybe the heart gives out,

but Music remains

like the golden ball in the well
the frog kept fetching back
alas alack the goose queen, princess, cried

stepping out in the moonlight on the Other Side
where she never can grow wise
because she can't leave lace like

wonder, ever, behind.

mary angela douglas 11 september 2019