For John Keats

perhaps he dreamed up his poems

that they should be past his Maytime flourishing

the brides of silence

unheard melodies he mused are sweeter

who could say that now

when everyone wants to be heard

but then he was a dreamer even for the times he lived in

and denizen of no socially trumpeting streets

inhabiting realms of gold

then coughing up blood

in the last retreats, so young! years condensed

beyond mead

who could match his effulgence

the brede work of exquisite workmanship

his melancholy exorbitance, bruised chivalries.

why wouldn't the nightingale want to live

among his branches forever

to sing effortlessly there

perhaps that's why we no longer speak of her so much, as such,

nor care, not in the old ways dim beyond repair

because she has gone, banished to better kingdoms

with him, oh John Keats.

I would sing of pomegranates, of unflinching stars

and destinies, of all you are and were

but you had left the harbor long since

and before I was a girl;

your Muse is past weeping now...

the sweet bird sings no fables here

not pouring out for our pragmatic ears

unceasingly, lavishly that music fountaining beauty

that he caught, rapturously,

world without end

mary angela douglas 31 october 2021

The Eighth Day

on the eighth day the stars rang out like bells

frost on the least of the leaves remaining

we lived for snow globes

subsets of the Christmas scene

and the fairy tale meanings

I tried to wrap up the sun to give my mother

it's hard to be young harder than you'll remember it being

with the names for things so tenuous

you could say milk and really mean bread

or nothing at all and still be fed

and all your thoughts are feelings and coloring things in.

where am I going what did I intend

the gardens grew on their own without me

the stars lent their rays

mary angela douglas 31 october 2021

Like Some Forgotten Phrase

the things you said at the time seem faraway

life in another universe I could say

no way to reverse the charge and start again

all votes are in and counted long ago; I'm

knowing the outcome now too well

if only words were an ocean swell

that comes and goes and breaks not always hard

returning to the shore at the end of days

who are we now, that former shores seem vague

or rather, dissolved or continents sunk below

this overcast day

where the rain blows in then disappears

like some forgotten phrase.

mary angela douglas 31 october 2021

The End Of Weather As We Knew It

you will say suppressing a smile

I am speaking about the news on earth

but that is not the point at all

I mean the inner weather from our birth

how it shifts across the violet skies

and boils up in its own particular last ditch summers

and when it snows there it is a forever

composed of such intricate ballets

the soul never grows tired of enacting them

the end of weather as we knew it has arrived.

the pinkish amber of morning no longer comes to mind.

you breathe but not steadily

so many paths are overgrown with vines

so many trees pruned back in Time

beside unrecognize=able housing.

we are at the end of weather as we knew it

the clarion autumns understand

leaf by leaf the life that was gold we are leaving

for something we don't yet understand

and yet hope for life renewed is a fountaining tree;

the far off bells calling us to a life without forecasts at all.

mary angela douglas 29 october 2021

I Heard The Weeping Of Words

in a dream I heard the weeping of words, the great Bruising

the ancient sounds from the rocks from the ground

the distances in singing, the anguish of breaking apart

in a dream I saw the ore of them taken

and on every shore the shells they had become, forsaken

forlorn

shells of words I have gathered in my small hands

breathing back into them life with such futility, the memory of

before

when Light was at the door....

how can I say much less sing the stone trapped words

or they are caught in a web we have made for them

in the history of lies no longer responding to their childhood names.

oh God. I cried in a dream and could barely choke out  his Name

for grief that words had fallen fallen

into such disdain.

mary angela douglas 28 october 2021

Here We Are Whispers The Soul

here we are placed in the often beautiful scenery

whispers the soul remembering the first glance of the moon

the reflection of light on the glass

here we still are loving the scent of grass new mown

trying to feel at home

still feeling, so often

miscast.

Eden is always vanishing like a mirage

you go to your job and do the routine things

but sometimes you sob sobs the soul

because of everything

how out of joint it all seems to be

then we remember nursery prayers

the feeling God is everywhere

even, even in this

wherever we are now

having perhaps

overstayed our dubious welcome

here, on this planet

always missing the cues.

mary angela douglas 28 october 2021

In October

so has the soul found itself lost among the green and golds of

fading summers so as to hear only the soughing of the wind

of the beginning and the end and yet that is Christ's name too

Alpha and Omega always in every story and there is Glory

and there is a hope beyond all seasons ;

so has the soul found itself to be reasoning not;

a drift of pale lemon across a vacant sky

exiled on earth turning inward 

turning inward as the day was long

and the frosts, all early.

this is autumn and the end of days

formerly as they were spent though

not of music though you cannot tell

where it all went giddy as the leaves

departing suddenly

leaving the branches to mourn.

so the soul has shed gold, peach gold and time

but still, not music.

mary angela douglas 27 october 2021

To Poetry: Eluding All Capture

truly it eludes our grasp

with a mist so fine

indistinguishable from breath

slip knot from Time

a sun shrunk to a needle of diamond

that fades in the grass, the leaf at dusk

that yet can shake us turning to rust

surpassing all grief in only one line.

like granite sometimes 

it may outlast

or fly a variegated kite 

on any breeze of our disposition.

whatever your position on it is

or may become

cast it off, a mere snakeskin.

an anchor of gold the moment you try

to ferret out its soul 

vain assessor, to determine its atomic weight

measure, balance.

mold it is and startling leaves that dazzle the tree

on saying goodbye without an october warning

the ferns underfoot the larks at morning innocent of sin

rubric of the Rose incarnate Dante died for

the wheel of everything that sings and then

that won't let you in oh and green clear green

the very notes of Eden summoning,

cherished in a dream half remembered;

the gleam on which the day depends.

the last postscript:

almost,the map of God.

mary angela douglas 26 october 2021

Q.E.D. For the Princess and the Pea Proof

if only algebra had been with picture book illustrations

rife with things from the fairy tale like

The Princess and the Pea Proof for instance

or how many golden apples were shaken down from the

trees of fable

prove x for the variable endings of the stories with lavish borders

so that the princess weeps pearls no more

or how many slices of hummingbird pie factoring in the fact

that tomorrow is the first day of Christmas can the Princess eat

and still not be queasy on a speeding coach

the one lined with cherry silk

going in the opposite direction

I still believe the Princess was real

even if she couldn't count in Prime Numbers.

mary angela douglas 24 october 2021

Mid Flood, Praying For The Rainbow Aftermath

mid flood, praying for the rainbow aftermath

I barely stood yet standing took to flight

and lifted by the sifting of the light

believed again in infinite Mercy.

so should it come to pass forever

when holding on at last

we find the opal portal to the sun,

the Son!

the green leafed hour of the Dove

the end of being shunned.

mary angela douglas 23 october 2021

Only Draw Light

only draw the light from the wells of history

my angel confided to me in the depths of night

in the depths of night when I had small rest

when I thought of the long road back

the quest that once glittered

in the noon of the day

how time has passed as though it were a cloud

oh what outlasts it all

draw light she whispered

turn it all into the stars

mary angela douglas 23 october 2021

Deposition From The Princess Marionette

it is easy to fulfill one's public duties

with the smile forever painted on your face

to dance and sing, to clap most pleasingly

when someone else pulls the strings of Grace

or else to lie desolate, unused

stored in the attic with the company props

never in charge of special ops

then its hard to find comfort in your one dress

of pink sateen your tinfoil crown

and yet, and yet when I consider how my light is bound still

I have gleaned  from on my own

even from collapsed positions in the wings

conversations under the stage set moonlit balconies.

mary angela douglas 23 october 2021

Dylan Thomas In The Dark Blue Dusk, The Gilded Dust Of Words (final version)

[for the poet Dylan Thomas]

as you were singing that the givers of Light
would have no end that the green rills
growing greener would furl in waves

about us ever near and clearer from year to year

and that the sun dipped in the clouds down low
would ever arise

somewhere farther beyond your white roads' chrism
we forgot that poetry is not prose
and no longer gathered the rose upon rose in praise

the once upons.
so that the prismed web broke

apart weeping and with it the human heart

my heart and where

and what and how in Art will the angels come
to trouble the springs again my friend

my friend so that healing descends

when your voice is stilled
when the news is all we know
I cannot comprehend

only that vaguely

blue and darker blue with the dusk
as your disguise the village from afar
you'll view

and weep for Wales and all you knew

the vast tendrils conquered and subdued
for all that meant to you.
and we go casting about in sighs

mere ghosts of ourselves
forgetting what you knew.
that bright words, should not be spare

but myriad, like the stars.

mary angela douglas 24 november 2016;22 october 2021

After Long Deserts Dreamed

I dreamed that language was a pure sphere shining

like the bright star of Keats like a silver tree

and the root was gold and in our sleep our long affliction

we breathed in Logos and it was Spring all language

flowering and the Renaissance of all hearts my heart

and the serpent was gone that gnawed at the root of gold

that strove to poison everything

the serpent was shed from the world from the worlds upon worlds

and each word grew green again and we were so happy

each word was a star like the bright star of Keats and steadfast

and the Glory of God was made manifest

manifest as every poem and richly blessed

we were and the sound of it only

Music, holy and pouring like a stream

after long deserts dreamed.

mary angela douglas 22 october 2021

I Trace The Fault Lines In The Leaf

(to St. Christopher from the legend in my Mama's story book)

I trace the fault lines in the leaf

and in the sun that golden coin

that burns the most the least of these

the least of these with no relief.

I carry on my back the stone

placed by the builders, cornerstone

of Christ alone who knew all grief

who understood the fissured leaf

the children led so far frose

the least of those  he bloomed for

like a rose beyond,

despite the death that should have finished him off.

mary angela douglas 22 october 2021

One Block From Me The Angels Live

one block from me the angels live I heard it whispered in a dream

and bang the screens when coming in

and gather dewdrops at day's end as if they were diamonds.

I've heard it said by those well read

to entertain them, angels at your door

you never know what they have come for

it may  be to save the kind.

and leave the rest behind.

mary angela douglas 21 october 2021

Making The Meeting On How Not To Save The Drowning

drowning people are not supposed to show up

at the hush hush meetings on dry land I mean

it's just not DONE for sure they never got the flyer

nobody wanted them to come

I mean, after all who wants somebody dripping with

seaweed in their parlour

even if it is all just on zoom

and even if the whole meeting is on

how Not to help the drowning.

but to just continue talking about

how to make it look like you are.

the fact that you managed to make the meeting

by chewing the rusty anchor off that was pinning you

down on the ocean floor in your sheer determination

to make it on time doesn't count for anything with them my friend

you won't even get a cupcake in the end.

mary angela douglas 21 october 2021;24 october 2021

1Mary Angela Douglas

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In Eden

hearing was like the flutter of doves

speaking like singing the wind through the grasses

or the high stars, chaparral,

the scuttle of foam on seas

and poetry what was poetry then

but all the light

as far as the heart could see

no impediment.

birdsong at rest or cresting the rainbow permanence

we were heirs to then

we were there

though to you it may not seem so

thinking we are the brides of an incontrovertible ignorance.

we were there we remember it the glance of emeralds at dawn

from every rose capped lawn

though with an insouciant rumbling

the world would drown out the slightest gleam in us now

we still go on living there

somehow: in every fugitive dream.

mary angela douglas 21 october 2021