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