The Names of Things Spelled Into Her Hands

(for Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan...)

about this maybe it was said about poetry about rising to

consciousness

as being underwater and then at the surface gasping for air

so I will name the color of the rose the rose itself

one and the same so I will come to hold within my heart

the beautiful things the colors that they are their shadows

on the sundial

so I will learn the name of orange the color with it

flower and fruit together leaf and twig and branch

and all of it gold in the light and the light falls into my heart

like a wedding 

and all the gold feelings become then a bouquet of gold fusillades

of gold I remember later on when the light is honeycombed

and then I recall the taste of honey at childhood breakfasts

the wax of the honeycomb and I stood still when my grandmother 

brushed my hair, or fixed my sash or when my grandfather untangled

the necklaces and then I knew this is all the Christmas my soul can

stand

it is too beautiful all the colours and shapes the passing of music

into a room

straight into what I am singing I am singing of what is light years

away

the shadowed pearl of the skies

as I am light years away now from the naming of the rose from water

spelled into my

hands the telegraphic shock of it and the Living stream the knowledge

that fissures out of the 

citrus darkness

that orange is orange that love is love that God is everything I am

made to understand

as you spell into my hands the uprush of angels, the world lit up

from the inside.the apple trees pale pink in astonishing bloom

and fragrant in glacial moonlight.

mary angela douglas 1 december 2021

Irrevocably

 we who remember the suns of other planets must keep still, keep

silence now on earth where we do not live and where the company has

changed hands the company has changed hands and the star flecked

armories

are few

where we renew a language men have forgot as they have forgotten

themselves

so we are trained in outward life to get on board, to be team

players

to direct our glassiest gaze

at the ever shifting Brands some say we exist to accommodate

so that we must relegate ourselves, to participate

all this is dry rot for we are caught by Christ and remember

Forever as even the smallest children do

dressed in blue, examining with surprise

the high pink celestial clouds

let them build their stockades and dangle the keys to the

cities beyond our reach

there is another country...our enforced

lamentable and ecstatic hearts

inhabit

when the peach still shines through leaden clouds accumulating above

the office parks

above the ghosts of trees

and how I wished in the summer breeze I could elude

the smokers on break in the front of the building and

slip out a side door to contemplate Ezekiel's wheel

that I could resign from blind kingdoms

Lord God. I am on my knees all the time now even when I appear to

stand to lean on your Presence to breathe

only you are the green air, the flecked with diamond dust, the ever

flowering wheel

and you believed in us

we will not fail

though we in exile live out our last days

half staged

in this anemic epoch

inside are we reeling the ruby emerald topaz feelings that

we are written into Your Music irrevocably.

mary angela douglas 30 november 2021;9 february 2022

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Restless

("Our hearts are restless, till they rest in Thee"

St. Augustine)

sometimes the heart must find rest

from all the questions that it cannot guess

from the quest that keeps falling apart

sometimes the heart runs out of homelands

is tired of taking a stand

is a nameless guest at a nameless feast

and can eat nothing

it will starve watching only the night skies

waiting for signs

oh that it could rest from all contrariness

that it could find a home under the small ferns

where it would be always, Spring.

mary angela douglas 24 november 2021;30 march 2023

Night Light At Christmas

TO MY DEAR SISTER SHARON AT CHRISTMAS AND ALWAYS

keep a candle in your heart

when it gets scary in the dark

and keep o keep your Christmas glow

like Eloise, that hint of snow that jingle jangle

very merry way of living, chocolate cherry

recall our trees with bubble lights, the color wheel

the angel flights and angel abra carousels

and all the reasons to be well,  

dismissed from school, the final bell

and then released to Christmas vacation

oh what a joy of preparations

remember when the snow was new

and with our Gramp the snow igloo

we built and lived in for a bit

then went inside for peppermint

ice cream, frothy in the bowl and crunchy candy

good you know, brazil nuts, oranges, gold doubloons,

stuffed in our stockings in the living room

petit fours on a delicate plate

and oh how hard it was to wait!

and how our Poochum pranced around

and tore the wrappings with a bound

and in the window from the front

the sweet nativity yellow light

beckoned us home from the angel pageants...

it seemed so real the Christmas star

hanging over our backyard

that's how I feel, how  I felt then

remember starshine on the wind

remember carols from Goodyear

the Holly Ball, and dollies dear and books galore

and wondrous toys how happy we were

with Christmas joys  and Mama sang oh Holy Night

and Grandmother hugged us very tight

and most of all in the manger crib

we felt that baby Jesus lived

and was our friend and loved us so

oh keep, o keep your Christmas glow.

for it is really all you know and all we needed

ever to know of Heaven.

mary angela douglas 23 november 2021

Neither Leaf Nor Bloom Have They Left

(against the dismissal of lyrical poetry as "unsustainable")

neither leaf nor bloom have they left

but only the desultory branch where no bird sings

in this, the artifice of winter prolonged

where song is not, nor Spring, and the heart diminished

and exultantly.

is poetry finished? laconically the magazines ask,

the small presses

pressing no vintage out

as if they cared. gone is the soul's bright task (to where?)

as the trending wordsmiths squeal, the hooligans:

we're in charge now.

on a dare, I send out ariadne's thread

and find instead of Chaos

the covenant rainbows of God intact

who leafs and blossoms in the craving winds

despite the shills, the indomitable shrill

Immune, and the overarching Lyric. still;

beginning and ending forever beginning again

Him will I serve

with my small bush and its sparrow madly caroling

down to the marrow I feel dismiss it how they will

the burnished tree of Poetry cannot be forced to unshine

less than it was wrought when poets caught

eternal fires in their poems and were not ashamed of it

and carried the moon like a searchlight in their eyes

who on the earth, wept for beauty openly, and undisguised

commiserating with the rains and not the academies

that man should choose to be monosyllabic again

and deaf and dumb and blind with clobbering banners upraised

with wings of lead outspread-

that this should be praised in lieu of the beautiful!

mary angela douglas 22 november 2021;10 february 2022

1Mary Angela Douglas

School Dream Well Into June

apple polishers ruled the land;

we were in a termless school

eating only mystery gruel

with homework assignments

by the square yard far so far from the golden rule

but life was still not all that cruel

if only we had known

resigned to fate and pigs in a blanket on the sectioned plate

on good days, pineapple upside down cake

and praying to God for last minute reprieves

when the bell rang in a pop quiz breeze

and freed us from the looming test

recalled us to our Sunday best.

mary angela douglas 22 november 2021;10 february 2022

Another Variation On The Story

there should be hidden panels in the dress

with embroideries of traceries of the most cherished flowers

and when she began to dance they bloomed

with slippers to match to a music box tune

so many ways we imagined her;my sister and I,

colouring it in on a Saturday:

with velvet panniers a skirt of tulle festooned with little stars

and in pale blue, pausing on the staircase

where even the shadows sing

and their song is of violets

even though it's blanched white winter outside

and the true heart mysteriously must abide,

is a missed target while sealed valentines

with dovelike paper wings flitter away:

at large in a doll sized snippy land.

mary angela douglas 21 november 2021

Nor Fade From Green

I make a wish, each leaf that falls

that we'll stay golden after all

though rude winds blow the stars away

that we'll keep shining anyway

I like to think of it this way

when all the skies turn grim to grey

last harvest was the best was said

of many of the glorious dead who now live in a house of gold

who knew their strength from age to age

was only God who never aged

who saves the best of wine for last

and what are we but vintage past

no age at all for being blessed

if we but hold on to the quest

to leave such shining in our wake

and bright with music

for His sake

from first to last begin again

the measure of His heart to win

be mirrored in our span of days

nor fade from green the living page.

mary angela douglas 20 november 2021

Long Live The Emerald City I Said

long live the Emerald City I said

to no one near but God

long live the place where we were fed

bright cereals, crackling in milk.

and though this world be full of the ilk

of those who harry us dawn to dusk

that we may earn a simple crust

long live, long live the storybook friends

and the ones that shone from the movie marquees

or even from the small tvs

in our past, erstwhile living rooms

where we found respite from the dooms and glooms.

and for eternal fortitude and singing all along the way,

long live our mutual courage and the ruby shoes

the golden means to the golden end

the path we took so far from home

not knowing where we were going then

on the backs of cyclonic furies

that led us somehow back again

through many trials my friend my friend.

mary angela douglas 20 november 2021

Rhetorically Speaking Into The Vast Of Dream

(fragment from a possible song cycle on "The Twelve Dancing Princesses.")

if we brushed our hems of apricot

against the gold dust of the day

would we then sing we are beyond time now

I cannot say but I can dream

that all that glitters is not seen

or if I wished belatedly or washed my face

in a crystal stream like the princess in storybook exile

would life seem not so heavy after awhile

the clouds lift revealing the moon

and the night grow calm?

mary angela douglas 19 november 2021

A Faint Nostalgia For The Stars Of Eden

(on Kitezh perhaps or on listening to Debussy's La Cathédrale

Engloutie in my Grandmother's piano studio)

and saints were bullied for cherishing the mirror images

though the image refracted the Lord God whom they could not see

directly and then not at all, and by decree

read the marquee on museum walls;

kicking eternity the new price of admission

in a blank slate dream of utter deprivation

and under a stone regime

we could not welcome our orphanhood

frozen over. where we stood.

where were our hands.

we learned the alphabets anew

under so many alien commands;

the brand new dictates

while all we previously loved at Easter

was rubbed out of the picture

or we lived blindfolded now;

snow blistered.

but lake water sparkled and could not be restrained

and we remembered former things and what remained:

a faint nostalgia for the stars of Eden

while what was underwater continued to glow,

a rose funneled fire.

and the willows gleamed.

mary angela douglas 17 november 2021;14 february 2022

Let Now No Reasonable Star

let now no reasonable star clang out

suddenly rogue as the clouds by winter's tempests driven

let my heart be riven so may it be faithful to the end

and not dissemble in a Romantic strain

beyond the borders that song allows.

I vow to thee countries of the illimitable imagination

it's all for the trefoil of abiding love

Christ died to shine straight through 

the world's dim equipoise refined, defined

in purity and truth, there is no denying.

mary angela douglas 16 november 2021;14 february 2022

On How A Poem Is Made

to mine the honey of words;to turn light on the spindle

the secret is to dream yourself into the light;the key,

to be conscious of light at all depths

that the bells wept seeking the drowned angels

farther from land now than it is possible to be

and then to gleam green on the instant

and sparkle into the fade

of all things made; to become the hum of bees

and the honey of the hive 

orange blossom, acacia,

may you sense from afar

the ruby tears of Mars, tin soldier , heart of lead

to lose the final dread

of time beyond all wars, the mended scars

of the eternities to mind the honey of the hive of words

as if it were the dress you wore sky blue as the summer day,

lightly, thinking little of yourself but careful for

the last prayer prayed, the last thing said

straying from the field

for the living, and the dead.

mary angela douglas 15 november 2021;14 february 2022

Ghosts On The Moon

(for Edgar Allen Poe that he might find rest)

sometimes when I am listening to very ancient tunes

I feel the boat is listing

like ghosts on the moon

or I have half way entered

an old familiar room

when all I feel is distance

is it ghosts on the moon?

o lily of the valley

the pearled bright web of tears

has ornamented all the lawns

of landscapes far and drear

the sky like a cobalt diamond

the ground begins to sing

and heaven is but a misting

and earth an echoing.

since music led me somewhere

I never meant to go

straight through a dahliad garden

into a realm of snow

and I see all the angels;

silks worked on a loom

and I will go on living

just like ghosts on the moon.

mary angela douglas 15 november 2021

Sea Change

"...into something rich and strange...'

Shakespeare

then poetry was the angel that troubled the water

a skein of lemon drops over the cloudless painting

and the ship moves sailing on pictured waters no longer 

stationary;rife with waves.

the ship of the birthday of the world:

the Muse holding rose bouquets like a Saint

while all the uncomprehending keep murmuring

o how quaint

the words that capture the other than

or if you can not may

plod on plod on

no once upon

keep your vagaries to yourself

intone the elves on the shelf

but you knew all along

poetry was the song chiming out at midnight

then the green leaves that faded not

and the leaves of books turning in the

wind, the ghost of belles-lettres

the whistle down the wind

so ornamented my friend in all the postwar lanes

we could have spoken in diamonds and gold for that moment

leaving the glittering air in our wake

it was

that kind of world

in which we dreamed awake

the sea churning in a locket keepsake.

mary angela douglas 14 november 2021;14 february 2022

O Give Me The Sun Bright Words

I will learn the brightest words

the words with the sun in them

the candlelit words from the Lord God

let the night words be banished

let the wolf gold words begone

and the sonar flares.

I will catch the silver breadcrumbs unawares

up early before the birds, before all dawns

and strew the paths with them

and sing sleep my child

awake my child no more

at the lion's door

for the children in flight

missing home

every poem, 

torch bright and inextinguishable..

mary angela douglas ``14 november 2021

Each One A Galaxy

sometimes words leave bruises;

sometimes they leave gaping wounds

crossing the canyon of even one

could take light years of black and blue

sometimes words are butterfly pinned

before the chloroform sets in

and leave a scar who could defend

if it were visible to men.

and kill a star or two. in you.

mary angela douglas `13 november 2021

The Whole Earth Is Haunted With The Holy Ghost

the whole earth is haunted with the Holy Ghost

with all that loved us most

seeking in us, forever, the lost Edens

the more vivid greens, the heartfelt blues

laced with clouds laced with clouds;

God's name aloud, aloud and ringing.

the whole earth is haunted with the

beauty that was to be

beauty becoming, ever more beautiful, by degrees,

ever more

beautiful;singing

that Christ, for our sake endured the cross

and in its wake arose.

He arose.

let all the colours be transposed

and earth washed clean and clear

so dear, my dear

that His image in us may again appear

and joy, that desultory bird ring out again;

Spring, filled with carols,

in the exultant snows.

mary angela douglas `13 november 2021

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