To The Nightingale Reviled

they have banished you sweet nightingale o
fabled nightingale from the modern poems
the post modern too the post post modern.

I will make a nest for you even in the smallest of my poems
the most miniature where you can feel
everything leafy and green around you

and the moistening dew. unfettered singing.
how you will fluff up your wings little nightingale.
how you will pour forth song.

in honor of Keats and the mulberry tree.
of all the beauty that came to be in the far ages of poetry
they are renouncing now.

how I remember Hans Andersen and how in his tale
you drove back death in a white garden
so that an Emperor lived. 

all that golden lore. i will forgive them for your sake.
I will make a garden for you
I will wait for you.

mary angela douglas 25 july 2020