Shrines

la dama de rosas, camellias too, the bronze chrysanthemums

the altar view these flowers I have heaped for you

oh my lost cathedrals

what have they done to you.

the marble poured the innocent blue

the small chaplets by the mill streams.

I see you seldom anymore in dreams

the star flowers arranged among the ferns

the yearning of the pale shrines.

see, I have heaped these flowers for you

primrose, and the summer violets you never knew

lay hidden under the dock leaves or turning in the cooling winds

where have you vanished my last cathedrals

where have they gathered you where have you been

so that everything vanished and folded up into a fan

of infinite embroidery lifted from the land

and words were clipped and songs mid flight

and all that was daylight became deep night

still I will return to lay before the small nativities

the centuries of chivalry

the turning on the dime

of murmurations of starlings through the amethyst skies

I will remember my lines

my heart full of lilacs,

I will remember everything. 

beauty, turning, on a wounded wing.

mary angela douglas 6 march 2021