For Sidney Lanier

to Sidney Lanier for his poem The Marshes of Glynn


the rose refractions of this stained glass hour
fall about the grass in my tree cathedral
in the woods where in my mind

I always pray. in the midst of pines
in the later blue of the day
and with the twilight bells.

there in the long shadows of the moss green aisles
I lift my heart as once did Lanier in the Marshes of Glynn
and i seem to see him there

and his prayer is heavy with yellow stars
with yellow stars and the exaltations
of the marshes of glynn

and I in the scent of the pines remember everything
I ever heard have ever read of beauty.
beauty rarified in the stained glass hour

and now the stain of iris blue the purple of the evening hour
has hastened.
and I must haste too

though I dont know when from all these reveries
and the sound, the sounds of the marshes of glynn.

the birds arising.

mary angela douglas 8 may 2020