My Most Roseate Years

(to my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas in lieu of roses, now)

that poems should filter beauty as summer trees the light

was often in childhood my cherished hidden delight

to sing like this! my wish of all wishes.

a poet said full long ago I know the woods of Arcady are dead

and yet to me it seems not so whenever I turn like Keats

to the realms of gold

and spy again as through a pinhole  the quartz bright kingdoms

of my own bequeathed to me

all that was hoped for in my most roseate years

shining and shining in the imperiled rose gardens sans fear and

ignorant of the days to come.

mary angela douglas 12 may 2021