To Be Found Again

catching up the things that we knew before

like tin cups from an ancient salvage

that because they were once dear as moss to us

shine like pure silver at a barely memorized well

may we find a way to begin again to spell

as with alphabet blocks fresh out of the box

or passed down, chipped with cheerfulness

still primary bright and the butterscotch filtered light

when Light and we were young.how long we have missed

the doll china cracked and partially

covered with oak leaves in the clearing

the air through the screen doors after it rained

when being at home meant everything the summer long

tracing our colouring book castles through the humid mists

the ones we would sing about in every refrain

decked out in finery

of our own green choosing.

how beautiful beyond words to describe

after so much losing

is the possibility it is all still alive

exactly the way we left it.

waiting all this time

to be found again all ribbon bright and

only slightly scarred in the same backyards 

when we least expect it and with the honeysuckle

days, the strawberry vines behind us no longer.

mary angela douglas 30 may 2021

String Theory

we must speak in riddles;

may we bide the time

till God unrolls for our delight

His golden ball of twine

and may we keep his secrets

and never break  the spell

till light breaks out from every rock

and heaven conquers hell.

mary angela douglas 29 may 2021

These Raids On Unspeakable Beauty

these raids on unspeakable beauty we had launched

across the bridge of unfettered moonlight

or keeping watch at the silver outposts of dawn

for the meteors scattered across the chilled lawns of

language where we gathered them in secret

and with such fraught hearts this was the art of poetry

then as Christ established seeking and saving what was lost

at inordinate cost seizing the reach of it 

from human speech in grief, in sudden gladness in the

shifting winds we shifted in

unknown and caught in the wheel of time yet free from

it in the time we wrote it down, the mystery we had found

the opening of the Rose of the Word the world barred to us

since Eden now with tears unlocked beseeching us

to sing to speak into music

as it should be spoken, the broken heart of it all,

redeemed.

mary angela douglas 28 may 2021

Looking At The Picture Of Flowers That Grow In The Himalayas

(to the poet Kalidasa)

dear far cousins of the field flowers I love from my childhood

in Arkansas I look at you and think what a miracle that I can

see

you even in this way without the breeze that flows for you out

of high clouds

without knowing the winters from which you emerged

still from your colours your not at all familiar petals

I feel to my fingertips longing to treasure you in bouquets

of farflung song how

mysteriously you are linked to the wild rose, the

Queen Anne's lace, the blue gentian or beloved blue violets

and if my meadowlarks rose and were able to sing to you

where you are tranquil in a transposed Spring not all that foreign

to them

I know they would be happy there with you

on the other side of Heaven on earth

if you think of the flower fields as a single continent bridged

across both spheres of the mapped and mapless earth

(the one of dreams within dreams)

where different birds too serenade you in colours I've never known

and are happy that they do.

mary angela douglas 27 may 2021;28 may 2021

A Little Rococo With Your Cocoa

I take delight in the creamy fact that my poems from time to time

are a little rococo in their rhymes, their extensions at the ballet

barre

my ballerina poems in starry tutus with tons of tulle in all the

pastels

and sequined as well and spotlighted

in lavender lighting or rose or who knows what lemony spectrums

oh why not be fantastico what's wrong with a few gilded angels peering over

the balustrades. the porticoes with amethyst sunbrusts

I won't be in the parade of the minimal I deal in the joys of the subliminal

I want to be on a golden wire to speak with clouds is my desire

as if it were summer forever

as if no deluge had come on earth

and in the linen skies surprise it

was raining down emeralds, emeralds!

mary angela douglas 26 may 2021

The Name Of God Fell Out Of The Sky

the name of God fell out of the sky

the shiniest star there ever was

the children saw it in the grass

overcome with shyness

they tiptoed round it 

the name of God they sang like small bells

the name of God and the pink flowers bowed down

the purple and the cream the squirrels froze freeze frame in their brashness

the sparrows came and curiously pecked at the gravel instead of the berries on the ground

so confused by the softest light

the softest light but it was everywhere coating the grass,

the trees, our sighs

we sat down by the lake and cast our dreams aside

because this dream beat them all

mary angela douglas 26 may 2021

Poetry Is A Kingdom Not A Locale

poetry is a Kingdom not a locale

so the Soul can turn on its heel

in catastrophes vanishing into the Pleiades for awhile;

sometimes, for good or

in the nick of time, time being withstood like a sea pervades its 

waves 

or a sea where the wave arose

and the rose was me and the rose was saved all brand from the fire

and I said I will wear teal taffeta;I will not retire except to

a sea of immalleable words true to the theme of being

if I need to be bird, star anamolie no longer captive to captivity

refuge that close to God

bright green bower in the winter's glower

so that when the outer worlds render you insensate

so that your sun is set a something cries not yet not yet

you can go through this somewhat hidden gate

into a place that is not a place

but the borderlands 

of all you thought was Lost.

mary angela douglas 26 may 2021

Dreaming To Order

why couldn't dreams be made to order

then I would have golden slippers in my dream

an Empire dress of wine velvet as though I were dressed for Christmas

it would be near Christmas but a mild day

ending with pink fluffy clouds

you can have your own clouds if you dont like mine

pink to the point of being rosy my clouds were

or what is the point of them being pink at all

I had a small key

to a cabinet of moonlight

inlaid with pearl

I opened it:

and the whole world was shining

mary angela douglas 25 may 2021

Stray Notes On Stray Pieces Of Paper

stray notes on stray pieces of paper

why do  they feel like the entrance to a gold mine

I can never throw them out

what if they hold some clue

to some forgotten you

I query the general multitude I imagine listening

there they are near and far about my small rooms glistening,

scattered like white diamonds in the blizzard of time's sugar snow

accumulations

reminders of a former purpose steeped in purple ink

now it's fading that one almost dropped in the sink

if I let it fall it may be new baptized even though the ink is 

smeared

though handwriting took a turn for the worse that year I will keep it

who knows what the heart can still decipher if it tries

who knows what fragment of a lost art it may comprise

my tattered consolation prize

my own my own Rosetta stone

I say again each time I turn  toward the bin

of personal history all my reservations intact

it reminds me I was trying to do something back

then, on a day fraught with flowe3rs imprints from a former track

the hours  still radiant

and almost a beacon now;I cling to their paper wings.

mary angela douglas 23 may 2021

The Reparations Rag

can you wake the Dead

with your johnny cake aspirations

saying heave ho johnny

this way down the yellow brick road

a little too late; here, take all the emeralds in the emerald city

for sure they have slept enough the long lost relatives

chained up for sure

what they endured what amount of money can

pay for pay for pay for, procure in this, the enchanted wood

of we would have been good, let us try to be good now

only Christ could, somehow.who wept blood.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2021

Subliminal Convenience Store Justifications Before The Lord/The Elevator Pitch ForThe Movie

 before I knew better I used to drink Big Gulps down,

eat frozen burritos because I was new in town

and the minimart was the only store I could walk to;

chew and chew all the way through the premade delish

cardboardy tuna fish, pimento cheese samiches in the back

savor BLUE RASPBERRY SLUSHIES, so sugar rushy

mostly though I was circumspect

coffee with hazelnut creamer internationally flavored I would savor,

nutter butter cookies, grape flavored drinks or cranberry apple

but now I dream in every flavor of Snapple;

extravagant snacks whole racks of them....so,

since it's all off limits now, in dreams I'm such a cow:

sweets with the sour consumed by the hour;

how I dream without introspection of handheld cherry pies

with their pristine sugar glaze on the everyday

topped off by lemon handheld pies for second breakfast;

a grilled hot dog microwaved specially on site, a city SUNDAY

NEWSPAPER what a delight AND just for the thrill of it a TRI STATE ROAD ATLAS I love extra maps!! the soft serve nilla cone at the gas

station

and pineapple pineapple Fanta nation and snowballs pink coconut,

chocolate interiors; a trailer sized pack of sour cream potato chips

and the CHOCOLATE cream filled cream

filled croissants who needs restaurants

JUST FRENCH ONION DIP for a successful trip

slurped down with buckets of raspberry tea I'm on the road in my

dream;

it's three, the ghost time of the .am. and Christmas Eve snowing

since I've never been on my own in a car

in lucid dreaming I've crossed the bar and

I'm praying cause I need a lot of energy to keep from straying into

the neighboring lanes like

it's bumper car time at the Fair I'm so dream dog cog tired from working

surrealistic dream jobs where I almost get hired but it isn't clear

so I wonder for years and anyway, get me some armour chili pop

topped some honey lemon cough drops and a slew of hiking

magazines enough Dinty More stew for nuclear winter

because I'm going to scale the Grand Canyon from the bottom up

in this dream you'll see, without a splinter, with the flood waters from the rapids

coming in for the closeups

its not a sin to fuel up.

in a situation like that. I can't eat my hat. I'll need lots of fizz,

four bear claws, and 19 pints of coffee hagan daz it's not against

the law. Gee Whiz, cheese whiz and cherry cheese

danish, danish danish....(echoes in the Canyon from dream stranded person in progress_who only has pickle juice left to survive on, a few limp rosemary basil triscuits...a trunkfull of Reader's Digest condensed books...and one jolly green rain poncho with Guideposts magazine special issue on angelic rescues folded up in the pocket...then I wake up in a rocket, one way ticket to Mars and I don't mean candy bars)

mary angela douglas 20 may 2021;21 may 2021

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Cherry Vanilla

somewhere there is a world where pure love works.

where cherry vanilla ice cream tastes like it did 

when you were a kid. on our yellow diamond days

where afternoons murmur come to the green glade

and you don't get in trouble for leaving school early

because everyone goes then

and anyway, in such a world you already did

all your homework in study hall.

somewhere there is a world where as Walt Disney

told us wishes do come true and the wishes are only

for pure love, for love as you knew it when you loved the earth,

the skies in their crayoned dimensions

the lamb like clouds.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2021

Holding Onto The Light

whatever it is that we are supposed to believe

in light of everything lovely falling apart

in this our life, for me it is the preserving jams

of Heaven I am counting on

the apricot, the clear pear green, the summer ripple

of air, the dreamy sheen of what  to wear

when carrying a bouquet of lavender

music on the page almost remembered except the

fingering the cool notes pouring out in fragments

of the latter day mind oh all human kind I wish

we could be happy here on earth

all the time with pink cakes in the afternoon soft

laughter toward evening

and if I could I would chase away all gloom as though it

were an invading army of geese easily scattered.over  the green...

I have offered you these semi precious stones

of the word won in small battles

holding onto the Light, even while disappearing

into it.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2021