We Are No One's Toy Soldiers Anymore

we are no one's toy soldiers anymore

I said to the troops inside my mind

who had started to assemble once more

on the parade grounds

from now on it is Christmas time forever

Christmas leave and we are free

and we are no one's toy soldiers anymore.

I repeated, because they did not stir. or acknowledge me.

I thought they would explode with joy

throw scarlet caps into the air with golden tassels.

the troops in my mind, but they were so used

to assembling there they remained

in perfect formation never looking at the clouds.

shall I blow a trumpet into their ears

my companions of the years

my thoughts who have kept me company

and ranged themselves with a will.

they may as well be phantoms so little

they heeded me

and I was at a loss what to do now that

they could not desist from marching

though marching orders were gone 

and marching on and on

never looking at the marsh where the wild birds rose

and the moss, so velvet green and the under grass

where the shadows of peace unseen

covered all their futile maneuvering

where the long shadows lulled me to sleep.

mary angela douglas 29 september 2020

Tasting The Mirrored Skies

beware of those the good book goes

who call sweet water sour

who believe in being dour

God knows I have spent enough time in their company

in inevitable labor in fools errands and for no gold

no peacock plumage procured

so I read poetry as far back as it goes; as it endures:

to find the source waters

and then I dip the gourd of my soul and drink

and am like a child again

tasting the mirrored skies.

mary angela douglas 28 september 2020

Dimes for the Meter

we need a new way to look at time when time is running out
no more dimes for the meter
and the sky with more of a faraway cast to it than ever
is closing in.
even in the cinema it rolls in with its clouds
past the lobby, the refreshment stand, rumbling
its cumulus colours;rounding the bend.it finds you.
the winds gather speed.
the ink you write in bleeds to indigo though it starts out gold
and finishes in amber whatever it is
you are finishing invariably knows that
you know winter is about to descend
you dont consult your watch anymore
or even distant friends
but wait for something sensed as if a bell might ring
causing commencement
a crystal bell summoned by angels you are
summoned by angels or you will be or a
ship is docking where there are no waters now
and there’s nothing to mend
because you won’t be wearing it tomorrow

mary angela douglas 26 september 2020

Largesse

we could have had our fill of sapphires

counting the blue skied wonders we've observed

or had the key dams over flow with music

flood the world with diadems we'd already heard

such has been the excess of starlight, rubied leaves in rhe darkening

winds

we couldn't imagine in the sunrise days

with the clocks outrunning us the coronets, the Christmas drums

that so much treasure left to us 

could last till Kingdom Come.

mary angela douglas 26 September 2020

It's Riddle Opening Onto Riddle

it's riddle opening onto riddle

the tributary, then the sea.

the gold flecks in the apple ridden orchards

it's what that music meant to me

the nocturnes and the barcarolles, the mockingbird

the whippoorwill calls; tilting the blinds to just reveal

the rose threaded skies...

what are you pretending now they ask me in disguise

I can hold my tongue forever

to never answer lies

it's riddle bound within the riddle

lavender lined, inside a dream

that keeps me living where all is dying

under a crystal stream

it's finding and then losing, only to find again

the circle of Light grows ever wider

in the poem that cannot end.

mary angela douglas 26 september 2020

Song Is Light

for Paul Simon, for all his beautiful music

song is light

don't weigh it down

or leave it orphaned on the ground

song is light

some may say oh that's not right

change the musical notation

say something wondrous to the nation

you may forget the reason you sang at all.

let them think small thoughts of you.

to your song be ever true

song is light song is light song is light.

mary angela douglas 25 september 2020

The Hole in The Clouds Espied

I dont know when I started getting seasick at the mention of the word professional

I think it was a long time ago and I still dont walk right

I want to look out at the trees and the sky the clouds

how unprofessional the clouds are they never stay where you put them

how will they survive

but they do

the trees and the shivering leaves in brisk October winds

they have spent everything to leave on the earth

their ruby colors their ochre their disappearing lemon splendors

how wasteful they are 

perhaps they should cut corners

go to seminars seek help.

ah professional world how I wish you had never been born

turning the children of the stars into bean counters

where will it all end

will you creak into Heaven

and need to be oiled

please stop leaving me messages everywhere

im going to go live in the clouds with my homemade ladder my harp

where you'll have to stop sending me invoices

whaere tbe sky is pink for no reason.

mary angela douglas 23 september 2020

Poem Leading Upwards

if you find this poem there is no mistake

coincidence all the words that banish mystery

when you are led suddenly

into an upward gaze

where the angels weave anew

in cloudlike fits Jacob's brightest Ladder.

or  if, and if the shoe fits the message turns to a crystal shoe

don't let it bother you. or to a rose to a wild rose

as in the poetry of Edward MacDowell.

suddenly on a well tuned piano you hear the grace notes

and leave all you have

in search of the one rose.

mary angela douglas 21 september 2020

I Wonder How It Is The Children Of Eden

I wonder how it is the children of Eden

came to be measured for motor skills

for if they played well with others

if they were off their feed when they ran down the hills

and gathered cowslips.

somehow I have a need in my thesaurus of earth and small tears 

that children not be so quantified

not measured as gold against the silver child

weighed in one scale to count the gleams

and made to feel strange for a little while

that becomes a whole lifetime of feeling measured as in

permenant records, and the sign blinks off and on again

let's hear applause for the gregarious at the dank assembles

and disapprove the ones that dream

stamen and pistil under the microscope reviewed

flower from fragrance torn reproved

is not so loving to these, newborn

to little ones the treasure of earth

to little ones measurable from birth

and I and I cannot praise the quantifiers.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2020

On Literary Cricism;The Questions At The End Of The Chapter

there's the body of the book on the table

and I know you will instruct the young

on how to dissect it

naming each part, ferreting out each theme.

what does the author mean.

I think of clouds of how Icarus flew

too near the sun and that is reading to me

not finding images one by one allusions

to the times the author lived in.

perhaps I won't be forgiven but

I think of angels with flaming wings

of the prophets swallowing the coal of the scroll

and I wonder who appointed you

to knok at the gate of my mind 

while I was drifting on the waves of words so fine

refined

through Space, Infinity not caring whose team was winning

who kept the score in every inning

and dreaming of what I was Reading.

as if I were the dream itself.

at  the very Beginning.

mary angela douglas 19 september 2020

Travel

we travel blind

one suitcase full of stars

stray things that gleamed along the way

its scuffed luggage, that's for sure.

it couldnt be any other way.

who knows when they step outside

if they will glide along the path

or will they hang onto the cliffs of blizzards

more days than not.

I think of this sometimes

whenever I remember what I had forgot.

traveling is harder than its looks

but brighter, too.

mary angela douglas 17 september 2020

Monster Poem In Blue

for Debbie Burton Linhorst

monsters woke me up in the dead middle of the night

they looked blue and fluffy, freshly laundered monsters.

what is it this time I tried to say in their language

their eyes glowed

this is getting old.

I threw my last flat pillow at them

they scattered

in the morning leaving cookie crumbs

all over the place.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2020

Random Derailments Or Telegrams

old records cannot indicate

the way we felt on the fairy tale road

interrupted by wars, lost train tickets

the sudden illness of the baby

the telegram comes while you are in the rose garden

or stacking crates in the warehouse

the kaleidoscope shifts are overwhelming

though still the summer leaves shine silver in the rains.

who can explain life's derailments

how stepping out one day before your house in the manner of Rilke

where all is moonlight is suddenly irreovocably

no longer a possible thing.

the bridge that stood there every day

suddenly washed out by the floods.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2020

The Dream Of Coming From The Eye Doctor

shadows, but light prevailing is what you see

in the scene where you are coming back from the eye doctor

and this is in a future somewhere not defined yet

the work in progress no one's ever read 

your eyes are skies with clouds and all you see is Heaven

even at the grocery store while waiting at the curb for the

light to turn and you tap with a hidden cane or a shepherd's crook

the pavement and cannot see that others look at you strangely

the sun is everything now a white gold light that fully fills the frame

of the window you have opened or the one that God has opened

and you see the angels plainly now the familiar faces from home

light years ago

a pink ribbon of a sky

and then, you are gone.

mary angela douglas 14 september 2020

Sparrow And Stone

some people look at you

as a stone might look at a sparrow

the sparrow all about singing fluttering in small pools

the stone unyielding

what can the sparrow do but fly into the blue

the blue understands

the blue smiles whenever there is singing

the blue is full of winds and hides the stars in cloudy pockets

but the stone is grim

the stone is grim

mary angela douglas 14 september 2020

In Heaven, In The Tall Grasses

maybe all things that were heavy on earth will be light there

walking in the tall grasses of Heaven, no sticker bushes

even uphill wont feel uphill

breathing in all  the green

and dressed in our summer Sunday best

no humidity

just the part of summer kept

that was eating raspberry sherbet

on a wrap around porch

the children dressed in blue violet shadows

remembering the old games

tag in Heaven.

wouldnt that be something.

where could you hide in all that light

and why would you want to

when everyone you loved

was finally in the same place

and forever

mary angela douglas 13 september 2020

P.S. This poem was inspired by an actual dream I had early this Sunday Morning.

This Dry Summer's Tears

to all my ancestors...

we've looked in dry wells long enough to know now

the dry leaves moldering there lost insects, whatever else

dropped into them over the years will never turn into now

fresh spring water as they did before

with the windlass broken

our old hearts too

for the times that were not immune to sentiment

to songs about the oak tree

what was inscribed there

to those who interpreted then the languages of birds

unashamed of moss and the little white stones

and lighthearted valentines

and the summer all the berries were picked

until we could eat no more

I want to say o I long to say

with the dark summer tears running down my face

oh dear ghosts how could we have left you here

and neglected you so long

who were not ashamed to sing in any weather

unabashed and from the heart

all the feelings you had then about life

when you were still living it

mary angela douglas 12 september 2020

Monster Flow Chart: How It Works

the important monsters sit in the front

its easier for the ones on the aisles

to arrange their tails, say, if they are dragons

but anyway

next rows left to right the second tier monsters

and so forth

standing in back near the  triple locked doors

the plebians.

standing up.

the whole time

the main monster is speaking.

waiting to be eaten.

mary angela douglas 12 september 2020

Once More Emerging

 once more emerging maybe into the almost beautiful at times, world-

we somehow forgot was our own may we suddenly herald

as much as angels did

the soft light that falls on the pine branches 

the air so clear and bright.

sweater weather we used to call it.

I think it is weather

for setting the soul to rights.

for gathering awhile

the harvests of light

the harvests of light

having lived through the night

to fasten it all together again

to mend the rainbows

mary angela douglas 11 september 2020

I Dreamed Perpetual Kingdoms

I dreamed perpetual kingdoms
that were not fazed by the waves
or could not vanish submerging their cathedrals

as in Debussy

or waver in the sunlight for a moment
so that we asked, what was that? was it there.
a rainbow brilliance so suddenly dispersed,

I dreamed perpetual kingdoms in the worst of times too

and a winding stair
and I could go there breaking off  with my hands
green leaves that would never depart.

and this was the place I rested at noontime
by the hidden streams that curled under a day lit crescent
moon of blue ivory

when the sky shepherd was bringing
the small lambs home

the ones that changed colours
the ones I thought of,
as my own.

mary angela douglas 9 september 2020

To Be The Streams

do not trust in appearances the fairy tale voices whisper
as in dreams only you really hear them this time
and wake up thinking after awhile just  this far from dawn
as it would take light to flourish in a doorway half open in expectation
so what if the wilderness never blooms
still You were flowering in the pillar and in the cloud
Lord God you were the honey of our days
and relief for tears was found
in the vast shadow of the Rock that

You Are.
so what if honey and milk could never flow
or the stars go into exile
along with the meteors.
it still would flash against all consciousness and bitter reason;
the blank screen of our numbed out minds
the silver of your presence on the way
honey in the Rock the scriptures say
which somehow the angels rolled away

and Christ emerged to flower forever
and to be the streams.
and we, the watered pastures of His hand.


mary angela douglas 8 september 2020

And Irish Butter

pure fairy tale and unalloyed I dreamed through reading
not necessarily through life that too clouded lens
but in reading in waves of reading

finding the way back to the cottage from where we begin to scatter
the crumbs of light
so that wo might be less alone

I remember.
I remember, do you
whatever you you are

this time out of the mirrored box where
reflections only collapse into themselves
I don't know.

carry the music box forward and don't add the one
when you're up at the board and the whole class is watching
and the teacher says there's no musical notation like that

in the known world 
and you think how could there be
and wake up in your own room

safe from schools.
with Maeterlinck's bluebird singing into the sky the coral,
the lacelike clouds

and there is dark bread to eat and Irish butter
and we are unaccountably happy.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2020

Vintage

it is a terrible terrible thing I said weeping to my God
in the snows to take the valentine heart of a person
and fold it, so

and pierce it through sharply with gilded paper arrows

sharpened to a point as though it were a target
but not of love, but not of love I heard the 
snow whispering, the sleet as it hit the corrugated roofs 

of utility buildings nearby while I walked under a sky
neither satin nor pearl
I have fitted my foot for labor and I no longer hear

the cotillions of snow and sleet passing over the world or see
the holly berries tucked into the crevices left by the ice
storms it is a terrible thing to wound the heart even in a madrigal

she sang with the winter storm and vanished 
into the long ago
the vintage winds

mary angela douglas 6 september 2020

I Hold Up To You My Small Particoloured Lanterns

To you Heavenly Father I wrote everything I wrote
and so I hope in my small notes
you will consent to be  the light that
will not go out in all

my particoloured lantern poems
I hold up to you, See?
you have candled every one

to the least particle of its singing
and whether the day be drear
or even the mirrors be night

still in the small puddles after the april rains
and long consideration of  the petals showering
the old pavements from the watercolouring trees

I see your clouds reflected

and their opalescence manifest
as if it were all all music in the end
even leaning from the window of my going away

and I know you can hear me.

mary angela douglas 4 september 2020

Sugar Egg

I believe in unexpected recoveries
reversals of light suddenly the encroaching darkness
turns back; the hollow languages; the bats are in flight

and the lilies sing and the irises.
it is Easter morning and through the panorama sugar egg's view
I spy my jonquils of an early spring, small rosebuds too
\
this isnt happening the note takers sputter
dressed in their clinical whites
while the very tree the lightning struck

is blossoming profusely and utterly
before their eyes.

mary angela douglas 3 september 2020

The Codes Of Shostakovich

the codes of Shostakovich musically speaking...
a person said to me rather like moonlight inverted
the bole of the tree inside out

an anguish of leaves falling an autumn already spent
weeping of flowers namely thy chrysanthemums, the mint from a foreign garden
rubbles for the rubied teas the Rubicon beyond me

those bronzes and lilacs the violins stretched to breaking
how shall I count the hours with no heart remaining to me

without the hour glass of music and the looking glass set free
where shall my soul slip through, ceding its pearls
what crevice for this neglected bloom

that droops and falls in no wind at all compared with
the lilacs the bronzes of the chrysanthemums they leave no
perfume to be traced
while old newspapers inciting old arguments
skirl on the winds.and are gone.

mary angela douglas 3 september 2020

Inquisitions

for keeping a small star in a thimble
perhaps I was scolded on a cloudless day
or given a final warning

resigned to going without my pay.
for keeping time with a riddle
for wearing my clothes the other way

for singing in all the corners
and putting my artwork on display.
for leaving the back door open

so me and the star could get away
eluding the  court astronomers'
taking the train to the Milky Way.

mary angela douglas 2 september 2020

NOTE ON THE POEM:

This poem came to me thinking of all the little things a person can be scolded for here and there over a lifetime by whoever feels like it at the time and then for some reason I started thinking about Galileo and what he went through with the Inquisition for saying what he saw in the Heavens exactly as he saw it. It would be fun to have a pet star;just a tiny one. Unless its mother missed it. St/. Exupery who wrote the enchanting book The Little Prince would probably know how to do that. And what it would be necessary to remember or to forget in order for that to happen.


I might have heard somewhere there was a version of this poem that occurred in an alternate universe and started out : FOR KEEPING A PENGUIN IN THE CLOSET but that could not have been me because my closets are smaller than the thimble.

The Music Of Gardens Is My Soul

the music of gardens is my soul
the emerald trilling of birds
the splash of clouds and sun with shade

the pearl grey doves.
the gate as Rilke said, where wishes wait
and the mixed perfumes

of all the loveliest blooms and I will translate
them or pick the least bouquet and fling it at the stars
in remembrance of all that was taken away

on the forced marches of the world
the music of gardens is my soul
I read perhaps from a poet long ago

woven into a dream scripted manuscript:

facing exile.leaving a note for the angels

under a stone.

mary angela douglas 2 september 2020

Making Christmas Last

Others have done it before us,

why not me I wonder, saving the last

sliver of fruitcake  wrapped peculiarly in star glow:

aluminum foil?may it multiply to become many feasts should I skid

into harder times towards winter in the New Year.

far from here on the slick streets in the slick world.

Ironing the wrapping paper out with its sleds, its snowmen

its cheeriness and holly and the rest of it,

I will paper the WALLS with it

the incorrigible bows

and the slippery ribbons of green and gold and the ornaments open in storage boxes I dont want to stow

glittering even in January still when cold sunrays hit their surfaces

through the freezing panes I cannot afford to curtain.

how can I bear to store you, glimmerings

this year I never will. Im making Christmas last more than Christmas past the chill of orange the candy cane thrill

and Star and stable and the angels lingering ever so splendidly near the spindly tree I love I will breathe in the perfumes of: fir or pine and balsam knowing you are mine o my evergreen Tree

all the bells of joy incessantly let them ring let me sing it over in my sleep when the world with its dearth wants to snatch it away, Jesus came today and nestled in the straw of my heart invisibly

to be born again I will not let him go!

into all that world weariness into the dirty snow on the block, Alone.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2020