My Ladder Leans Against The Skies

one day there is this shifting of the winds

the edging of green around a scarlet leaf or burnt umber

my heart is burnt umber too perhaps you say to yourself

not knowing what you are saying yet knowing

am I growing farther away from earth already?

a small voice within you cries amid the restlessness of all winged

things

is that what this is?

and it's pale green appled the thing you most wanted 

to say but forgot.

my ladder's transparent against the intensification of the skies

I can see the burnt sienna edging on the clouds

or it feels as if in the emotional tone of the story ongoing

that the burning bush is everywhere you look now

though the message is still indecipherable.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2021

Not Poetry Outloud;Something Else Instead

Poetry Outloud now is the catch phrase

not for me I dont like poetry raz mah taz

and raspberry fizz all over the place gee whiz

I like poetry in the golden rim of the simmering soup

in the soap bubbles in the sink glazing over with merrily, elongated 

rainbows

or the tickety tack of hail stones on the roof,the sweet roads back

or just inside the door after I close it how the trees seem to sigh

goodbye in the wind to me no longer outdoors and I think this is

poetry just breathing in

and out with the orchids, the meteors memorized the best I can

with no accolades no

show show boating cracker jack prize

shimmy sham flim flam custard, flan with a cherry if you're loud 

enough

loud enough loud enough to beat the band.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2021

Who Are You Where Have You Been

(for Glenda Hamilton, in eternal friendship)

who are you where have you been

perhaps your attending angel "sends to know", my friend,

from the Christmas bustle perpetually that is Heaven

but you're a child of the rain and the wind

and can't tell your tears from the rain on the windowpane

so she asks again, the angel, this time speaking in a voice of

marble that dissolves into clouds and scatters the starlight farther on

who were you how have you been

but you turn the page of the book you never finish

the one with green leaves on the cover

the one that's written in the amber of the last sun.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2021

RAINY SATURDAYS, CONSULTING THE DICTIONARY OF PRISMS

RAINY SATURDAYS, CONSULTING THE DICTIONARY OF PRISMS

such things to do on a rainy Saturday we children knew

such as thumbing through the dictionary of prisms

the birds of the world in tinted photographs

the spectrum as it all breaks down for the color wheels

of the saints

into a thousand thousand Christmas colours at their zenith

and Space as seen in indigo, even in ultraviolet.

this is how I remember Saturday and especially

summer freedoms, the days of the jeweled rains

when telling time

by the rainbows on the wall was superfine

as child bright ardour

even in a squall was more than a pastime struck by

the endless refractions of light into magical brinkmanship:

the seed pearl destinations of the dolls

the birds going nowhere

somewhat stationary on the page

but so resplendent, visionary

our book reports on the field guide to the gems

of North America, using every crayon we had.

and how my little sister sparkled in the thought of peridot green.

mary angela douglas 29 august 2021

1Mary Angela Douglas

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At the Malevich Exhibition For Awhile

(refractions of the National Gallery, Washington D.C. Kazimir Malevich Exhibition,September 16-November 4, 1990)

for the poet sentences rise at dawn

though you wouldn't know it to look at the pictures

that are either blinding snow,snow blinding, or the absence of snow

or the absence of light is what the shadows are singing

and the eclipses, and wing tip to wing tip the origami pieces

of the black swans obliterate the semi golden crane

or I am viewed with disdain

perhaps only me thinking too much about the aureoles

or other things is this not the funeral of the Sun?

tangential things which are somehow relevant because they

are also unclear as to the source of light in the painting

or the source of no light in the painting why must I cry

we cry, dashing the tears against the absence of light

of the emigres in flight no longer

should they stand before then as before

some square of Malevich contemplating the black snows

or the circuitous rebounding of the ravens massed in

the thunderhead skies

or Chaos before Light had language

whatever are we to make worldwide

of the private declensions we have known

the forced departures, weddings from the throne rooms decreed

and then the beheadings

let the black snows accumulate

and the white conceptual rainbows dazzle on

all squares being equal in the end and courtyards

with some ballets of diamonds made portending

a possible choreography from here

whenever nightfall comes in the middle of the school day

the interminable term

the curtain descending mid Christmas on the several worlds' ends

or being but not on Grace

yet art remains a thing not to be ransomed

before a friend can be traced or disappear

or be rezoned or leave since leaving is also a home

though tears remain dashed against a stone.my tears alone.

for all things known and unknown.

pure obsidian.

mary angela douglas 29, 30 august 2021

When I Am Lost Like The Stray Puzzle Piece From The Box (Second Version)

 WHEN I AM LOST LIKE THE STRAY PUZZLE PIECE FROM THE BOX

(Second Version)

when I am lost like the stray puzzle piece from the jigsaw

so that I want to climb back into some sky blue preexistence of the

Soul where the perched transparencies of song cannot weep from

my narrow shoulders

as if that could be or hide among the roses there

or in some unclocked in eternal glaze of the evergreen shade

take refuge near the silver of the winter sun

in the drifts between school days and beyond the accounts

or old homework dream

till I see the gleam of your stars Oh Lord when you set them there

before all tarnishing...

let me stay only a little longer in the twilight of all Mays

cast in my blue shadows or in the rose period remembering

fresh chalk and the pastels from the tin unused

knowing the pink blur between the green hills

had to be the rising, not the setting sun.

mary angela douglas 28, 29 august 2021

Pietà

Still His wounded memory shines

beyond assessing human crimes

and bearing all is hemorraging in little stars

you call Him quaint if anything at all

and thicken the walls that seem to keep him Out

yet in His tenderness still we live

who  doubt His longing to forgive

and laugh to scorn the steps he takes

to every Golgotha for our sakes

yet with each fresh wound Light must grow

that has no other course to go

and tread the way both broken

and Whole.

and tread the way both broken and Whole.

mary angela douglas 28 august 2021

Remedy

take the honey of the poem for healing

and then the milky tea

the thistle on the hedge  is stealing

the scents of Spring from Thee

you know what you have read in secret

in the book of long ago

you know the rose can bloom in winter

though no one ever told you so

and you know the way to the castle

that no earthly map can show

so take the honey of the poem

and the music wrapped in snow

even if at this dim juncture

it seems too late to go.

mary angela douglas 28 august 2021

When I Am Lost Like The Stray Puzzle Piece From The Box

 WHEN I AM LOST LIKE THE STRAY PUZZLE PIECE FROM THE BOX

when I am lost like the stray puzzle piece from the jigsaw

so that I want to climb back into the preexistence of the Soul

as if that would be possible and hide among the roses there

or in some unclocked in eternal glaze of the evergreen shade

take refuge near the silver of the winter sun

in the drifts between school days and beyond the accountable

and all homework dream

till I see the gleam of your stars Oh Lord when you set them there

before all tarnishing

let me stay only a little longer in the twilight of all Mays

cast in my blue shadows or in the rose period remembering

fresh chalk and the pastels from the box unused

knowing the pink blur between the green hills

had to be the rising, not the setting sun.

mary angela douglas 28 august 2021

1Mary Angela Douglas

My Grandmother's Piano

 

so let one diamond scarab constellation lie

gathering the evening into pale indigo folds

and we will recount old stories out of those long agos

from Schirmer's library in red and gold

or bid the long cherished music rise

as if, composed on the instant.

in every piano now I hear the one

most customary Steinway in my Grandmother's home

sweeter to me those notes than as Scripture imparts,

the honeycomb

or any that clashed in Beethoven like storms

dazzling the birds into extravagancies of birdsong

or in the gushing streaming of rain down the drainpipes and into the

suburban lanes that I remember too. and all that ethereal blue

of Little Rock's sky written views

as Stevenson said "oh home no longer home to me

whither will I wander..." from you

now that that piano has set like an ebony sun

the lid closed down in plum eclipse; sheet music shuttled away;

the glass bright sounds surely having drifted so much farther into

Space

than when we were children not knowing how time could run;

mystified;learning about grace notes.

serenades;the occasional tarantella

in rose flame taffeta

my Grandmother smoothing the dream chords

of her Liebestraum...long into the late afternoons.

the may flowering early moons of the Spinning Songs of aspiring

pupils have spun their irremediable gold

oh lovely music;that cannot be resumed.

I hold to you and will not let you go.

mary angela douglas 26, 27 august 2021

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