A LETTER TO YOU DEAR READER: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL POEM IN THE WORLD

 A LETTER TO YOU: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL POEM IN MY OPINION

Dear Reader, whoever you are and wherever you may be and however you may feel today about your life or anything past, present, or to come

I just felt to share with you this hour this day what I consider to be the most beautiful poem in the world. That is PSALM 23 from the Bible. It is really like a prayer and it has the power to soothe to comfort and strengthen you in each and every storm of life. Just read it or better yet, say it aloud and from your heart or pray it silently and you will see what I mean BECAUSE dear person, The Lord God truly IS your shelter and your shepherd NO MATTER WHAT. God be with you always. He is our home and our rock of ages, the Lord God of hosts and his Son Christ Jesus. You may feel all alone in the world but He IS with you and will always be with you in His lovingkindness. You can be sure of that.

God be with you.

Psalm 23

King James Version

23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

THE JUMPING ROPE QUEENS IN FINGERPAINT GREEN

we drank the summer up like orange soda,

orangeade, I'm in the shade

with an ice cream spade

and its cherry vanilla all

up at the villa for my sister and I

and we're too little

to eat peanut brittle

or sip some coffee

so we settle for toffee

in little bits

and lots of fizz

you know how it is

in the coke that's floats

on the fourth of july

when we play I spy

and lots of things

and the zither that sings

about diamond rings

and mockingbirds

and have you heard

I'm the jumping rope queen

in all of my dreams

and the dust flies high

till it coats the sky

like the wizard of Oz

when the cyclone came

in our Mary Jane's

(patent leather shoes)

we'll travel there

to gather news

and have room to spare

for another summer 

that's fingerpaint green

as my mother would say

le creme de la cream.

mary angela douglass 28 september 2022;21 february 2023

TIME IN ITS GOLDEN CIRCUIT

the light comes down

between pastel hills

earnestly smudged

and in a pink glow

and you are happy then to show

on your manila paper a hint of snow

that comes and goes

or Spring laughing in sudden flowers

evening slips into a purple shading

the clouds that later

illumined will be

in silver ripples

so far from me

in lullabies going off to sea

Time in its endless

Time in its golden circuit

caroling home.

mary angela douglas 28 september 2022;21 february 2023

SING AS YOU DID, THE SECRET NAMES OF FERNS

once as a child did you speak into unknowing

the seashell of the darkness

coded with pink light in such small stars

and hear the star music, 

as if it were as familiar a thing

as teacups

just before waking up

what could you know about the history of light

but you felt it.

find in grown over shrubbery in dreams

the cottage of a distant scene, the playhouse remembered

and the blackberry vines

and strangely, feel at home there

and think nothing of it of Time

not even the fisher price playroom wall clock

with its see through to red, blue and green

plastic cogs

did you see through what seemed opaque

to anyone else as if glimpsing

flowers before their blooming

the beauty accomplished

birds just before their launches into song

the treble notes trembling in the dew on the leaves

the robins egg blue skies when it was thundering

surely Grandmother must have seen

prescient as she was, like Maeterlinck

the light streaming mysteriously 

as you did, mellow through the living room's

fleur di lis globe

or notice the cloud the one cloud

suddenly tipped with vermillion tipping over

or sing as you did

the secret names of ferns

when only the wind was listening

and perhaps one small chirping bird

on the pavement of dreams

everafter all sparrows would seem to you

golden

though you lost or never found the reasons why

towards Easter the light settling over the irises 

underneath the piano studio window

seemed gilded beyond the ordinary

affected by my sister's hours of beauteous practice

producing small tears in the corners of your eyes

in the pale green coldness

of early Spring afternoons when heard from outside

soon, too soon now the fairytale endings

o stop, Time, even for a minute!

but even then, weren't we always

drifting away with the moon

our house and everything everyone in it.

mary angela douglas 27 september 2022;21 february 2023 9

SO SHOULD THE DROWSING BRANDS BE PLUCKED

so should the drowsing brands be plucked

from the dreaming fires of what could be

abruptly into charred reality, or anonymously

than that they should be read complicitly

and misconstrued

the poets made of fire and dew

the more than eloquent 

now conscripted to serve

the politically absurd

better to tread no stage at all

and never to be named or known

than to survive millenia this way

so to assay the future

so to no avail

not to prevail for ages from their rightful souls

but ever to be trolled, marauded, bought and sold

defaced from view, repackaged in a petulant nomenclature

who raced their chariots toward a peerless sun

in words of gold of pearl now read,

now lectured on, as if they were done.

and never dreamed at all.

mary angela douglas 24 september 2022;22 february 2023

ON LOOKING INTO A HIGH SCHOOL CHEMISTRY BOOK

 

the colloidal world is the world of neglected dimensions

I read beneath a tree

half tracing the pale evocative words

that seem to be

displaced from poetry

and the shadowed leaves shining

on my school book

drifting in an afternoon

I clutch absently

the fade from green

of the withering grass

and feel instinctively

that the leaves are dying

and this will pass, is passing

it is their Age, the bright corona of the autumn days.

is it the shadow's leaf or the leaf's shadow

crumbling in my hands that shutters

the too snowy quiet of the page

there is some revelation here

that will not easily disclose itself

music glistens from an open window

(someone's Debussy, sifting through)

late practice of an afternoon

or is it early shimmering

the dream sounds surround me

the song, melting around me

in the orange of the leaves

and their light

unrill the light! if only I could

spoking the quiet exoticism

of the words I love, the otherworldly phrase

lifting from the text to the unseen stars above

blinds me to the page of untrammeled snow

or Love,

trackless, I don't really know

the neglected dimensions

or seek to know

I am suddenly very old

diminishing in the braille of light

I seem not to know

how long I have been here on the lawn

or why or where

the afternoon has gone

mary angela douglas 3 april 1970;, St. Louis, Missouri (Fontbonne College)

revised 23 september 2022 Crystal Towers, Winston Salem, North Carolina

ONE DAY EMERGING FROM THE ROSE THICKETED CASTLE

 

one day emerging from the rose, thicketed castle

the troubled sleep

may we emerge into the mild and wild orchid daylight

with a half shell moon still grazing the skies

all brambles gone

and find to infinite surprise 

there is no bad news forever

and all Kingdoms reprise

the glory of the first beginning

when God touched our eyes 

and this was Seeing, Being, Dreaming, Alive!

and we are free, washed in the jubilant bells

delivered from all spells by Jesu, Christ, redeemed

free as the green of grass

the blue of sky 

in a child's first colouring book

free to arrive at the sepia toned train station

ticketless, timelessly all in an  outpost's dream

into the mainspring of happiness of everything 

specific as the amber of our tea,

as the endless holiday clatter of our sprigged china

and the inexhaustible larder of jam filled pantries

and each will sing without needing to be 

famous for it

or fly with an iridescent wing

with no edgy expectation

into again the deep woods solace

with diamond clarity

seeking no prey; no need to outdistance anyone-per se

under no icarian, no feckless sun.

in a joy brimmed day asking nothing of anyone

the telegraph relayed:

all battles won.we are coming home.

mary angela douglas 22 september 2022;22 february 2023

WILLIAM BLAKE SAID, SO IT SEEMED

 

I caught Brightness in a net of dream

William Blake said so it seemed

really in fact, a cobbler's dream

to me nesting doll that I am within

so many predecessor poets, friends

born of so varicoloured, the divinest whim;

I keep looking out for them and

I will listen

while they glisten

and William Blake said

that is good

even this late, you really should

rewand again these disenchanted woods.

mary angela douglas 21 september 2022;22 february 2023

TREES STAND STILL

trees stand still and so do I

clouds rest softly on a painted sky

when not a breath of wind goes by

who can sail those ships of flame

high above the earth's domain

when so stilly they remain

still the rose so rosely breathes

I breathe too the rose breath in

forgetting that the world will end

the world will end

yet all things 

our God shall mend.

mary angela douglas 21 septemner 2022;22 february 2023

THE IMPERIAL LIGHT OF THOMAS ALVA EDISON

 

the imperial light of Thomas Alva Edison encouraged our minds

and made us happy to learn about science early in grade school

so that later the Wizard of Menlo Park became at sleepy times

the Wonderful Wizard of Oz

except that the technicolor on black and white teevee

blurred our understanding for awhile

that a million and one experimental failures

coloured it all in emerald green the shamrock colour too

be more than lucky in what you do, try hard

our parents, our grandparents urged

the light of the heart will help you

stand in a green light then oh child and

then in an imagined pink one

for George Washington's cherry tree

just about to bloom when he chopped it down

well we knew the story of Lincoln trudging for miles

through the heavy snows and cold

to borrow just one book from a neighbor

to be read by firelight back home in the log cabin

beautifully illustrated

George Washington Carver who gave us the blessing of

peanut butter (with jam) on our sandwiches

for sure we loved him for it

and some or all of this comprises the storybook land

of the lives of heroes fictional or real

written for us in special children's biographies

so that we would also be inspired

To Do Great Things in the space age

and be hired by Wonder

our readers full of flatboats and the winds

of Grace, the hardships of the human race

Fulton's folly and all things jolly

and the beautiful jinns of fable, the flickering twinkle

lights about the fir and balsam on winter silent nights

or classroom chrismed with the construction paper chains

we glued and looped ourselves garlanding our small tree

day before Christmas vacation classroom butter cookies

such a spree, in shapes of the star, the bell trimmed

with silver beads

or we were fitted with angels wings and taught to sing

God's glory for it all and page by page enthralling!

the cranberry skeins of the skies. out on the blizzarding

prairies we surmised and the plains before our eyes arose

the hoedowns and the johnny cakes sustained

I will of this muddled, medlied happy world a poem make

I said and taking the syrup down from an ancient shelf

I breathed in the maple sugar of it all

and lived, as Ray Bradbury said, as I always will,

Forever. You do the same.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2022;22 february 2023

LAND AND TITLE AND DEED (FINAL DRAFT)

 

beautiful are the lands that do not alter

holding aloft one short candle in the eclipse

I could say more about this

reading the chart for failing starry blips,

and never believing it

because the heart, my heart, is still living

as individual beauty hits a wall

and things are so drearily averaged

into the one and all

but individual sorrow says it all

distinctly, without saying

anything the papers ever sold before

while less than rhapsodic angels hold the

door

while they patrol and I lament

following my own bent

the inner republics, geographies breaking apart

there is no diagnosis in the ark

last on the floods from land

floating in the dark

and something whispers, I've seen this before

the singular inward continental drift

from the blank, collective shore

only by inner light outlast the day

the mercenaries sought what God had never wrought

to take it all away

my soul, my soul.

be very brave.

mary angela douglas 17 september 2022;18 september 2022;22 february 2023

SUDDENLY TURNING IN THE BALLET

 

we will dress in rose colours we thought

when we grow older in prints of more intricate,

delicate design, with lace tatted collars

or I don't know

an opaline sense of time

of timing in the music

of the concertos where glasslike

we dwell between movements

and the charming chime

of the angelabras at Christmas

I have mentioned many times

in other poems I know

not being able to recover

from the beauty of snow

of snowing of all the tenses of snow

in which I long to speak but in a way

in which there is no vanishing;

no need for piano transcriptions

of the vanished.

mary angela douglas 16 september;18 september 2022

THE POINT OF ALL THIS STUDY

 

riders may read what they may read

charging the sun on invisible steeds

riders may read.

riders may read behind the lines

facing the Enemy time past time

falling away but only to rise

only to rise...

long were the years

when we could see

all worlds before us as we read

nearer and nearer and half past dead

dodging our fears in clouded scenea

still in our visions green as green

more like the Dream we read to Dream

till in the Brighter light we see

Christ incarnate in word and deed;

read in his Face, Eternity.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2022;23 february 2023

RISING NOT TO THE OCCASION OF THE KING SPENT DAY

rising not to the occasion of the king spent day

forgive us, Father, that we stumble on our way

over so much gold in the soul of everything

You have made

and utter dark proclamations.

what have we done

with the regal nights

that you have offered us in the purple of your stars

bleeding beauty by beauty from a vaster twilight

than we can comprehend who end

what you would only begin

oh why take flight from Divine love

so duly articulated;not to feel at all

so that the bells cry out, cathedral stung

and peal with desolation?

who can defend us now

at the borders of the ruined countries

of our hearts

who call light dark,and marr the universe

of your sighs and borrow not what you would more than lend

but only steal

and do not, do not make amends.

mary angela douglas 14 september 2022;23 february 2023

THE MIRACLE STILL OCCURS

 

maybe it's time to go beyond this hour of snow

prolonged it seems a season of woe

into the new fledged Spring

held down to a violet whispering

a hint of rouge in the sky

a surge of who knows why

the miracle still occurs

when the long night turns to pearl.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022

ON THE ILLUSTRIOUS ILLUSTRATOR ARTHUR RACKHAM

 

as if he dipped his brush in mist

how else could he accomplish this rendering

of moonlight and shadows

on the page before you

fresh still from the unacknowledged realms

where he dwelled seemingly

two places or more

at the same time

entering by a door held upon by querulous elves

in a refinement unexcelled

who else

could bring such vagaries to watercoloured light

the wake of the wind and the Princess in flight

in a twilight seeming

more acute than dreaming

ghostlike but clear as the clearest stream

rendering the thing you yearned for

in earliest childhood,the visual language for it

recalling long forgotten years

in the very same colors

that have disappeared.

but there, on the fern breathed page

the imprint still remains.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022;23 february 2023

THE GOLD HAS BEEN SIFTED, THE SAND REMAINS

 

in the old fairy tales in the best

translations with the rose and the lily

the phoenix embossed covers

with the woodcuts or something by Rackham

who turned any lock to that elusive kingdom

inside out

so easily as if he made the master key from

the winds invisible or from the Dream

formidable

Dore to Dante, so elegantly tempetuously

portrayed or to Cervantes the ways through

the tangled woods toward Infinite Light

the quests of Arthur laid to rest

the disenchanted Knight and his squire

the early or late interventions disabling

the Dreamers

well, in those books you will find

a something refined and inexplicably edited

out, sifted out gold to our detriment

of the modern versions as if the moon

were clipped from the skies, the clouds

turned silvery, the Rose from the dessicated 

Heart, the emeralds from Oz

that is the warning elliptical as it may seem

to the attentive and lucidly dreaming reader:

it's not the nightingale of artifice you want

the trees pruned back as though they were

never in blossom

when you are facing death or death in life

but the real one

yet

so men cried with Christ on the cross to

Pilate's slippery question

whom shall I release to you then:

oh no. not Him.

give us Barabbas.

or as Hans Andersen said

we have been made to drink sand

from a teacup, and call it good.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022;27 february 2023

GREEN BEANS

in the grand Museums far from very far

shreds of gold are softly

flaking off

the icons and the stars

and certain planets

not yet born

in the grandiose Museums

Spring on the avenues

all the trees are flowering

my bills are past due

but I can go

on mild days or through snow

to see brilliant paintings from

the very long ago

in a gallery of dreams

even if I have to

just eat green beans.

I know the tides will turn

toward everything beautiful

I ever learned.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022;27 february 2023

EASIER TOWARD THE END

 

maybe falling asleep is easier toward the end

just like a cloud upon the wind

when raindrops scatter spectrums

falling asleep may not be hard

golden ladders in the yard unroll

and softly steps the sole of the Soul from

rung to apple blossomed rung

whispered the child is this how its sung

fairytale peal to peal

forgetting what is real or what was

widely thought to be so

letting go like the sun leaves the sky

whenever the moon is standing by

in the ultimate snow, relinquishing

the need to feel,the need to be

here, what was thought to be, alive.

looking Eternity in the eye

new blossoming.

mary angela douglas 4 september 2022;27 february 2023

WHEN THE BRIGHT RED LEAVES RAINED DOWN

scribbled on small pieces of cloud

that the magpie brought us

when she was so inclined

or when we had enough sweet mercury dimes

to purchase the paperbacks so sublime

in grade school

maybe we found the directions to the Castle

or looked through our half blown

swirly rainbow bubbles backyard breeze ferried

clear through to the next town over

you know as they say the town that time forgot

or I am caught in several stories at once

with the notes on index cards for easy reference

how wonderful when homework turned out to be

a soliloquy on nancy drew mysteries

a golden prowl at the Alcott orchards

golden apples shaken down.

the weather when it was sere

in Jane Eyre year to year.

I bless the life of the mind

extended into overtime from childhood on

into lustrous stories berry ripe 

frost tipped with the dreaming about them

with alternate endings

when the bright red leaves from october's trees,

rained down.

mary angela douglas 4 september 2022;27 february 2023

INTO THE CHERRY DALES

for what tumbles over

into the cherry dales

spilling its silver pail

and must be righted again

sending its colours into a summer spinning sky

or flares, if it is at sea

its please remember me

for what falls off the edge

and slips into the flowered hedge 

or the music box made out of lead

measuring the unsequined hours

captive in the fairytale towers

for what exists beyond all whys

I cast my nets of gold  of fugitive enterprise

that Beauty may be free from lies. but not

from cherishing.

mary angela douglas 4 september 2022

THE WAY IT HAPPENED IN THE PICTURE BOOK

 

farther into the music it will start to snow

for the lost children in the fairytale

you know,

hand in fragile hand under veering moonlight

holding each other up as though they could

sip the moon from a silver cup in the dubious Wood

and enchant the birds.

conjure the birds to show them where to go sojourn

in deeper music ever deepening snow oh

who will guide them now, their feckless angels?

or is their doom sealed shut

or is their small print case on vast appeal

I dare not ask of anyone yet but, oh, I try to feel

one day unwavering Spring will emerge

when there will be no more dirges left on earth.

mary angela douglas 3 september 2022;27 february 2023

OCTOBER'S FAIRS ARE WHIRLING IN THE DARK

october's Fairs are whirling in the dark

snapdragon colours firework sped

crown all the parks and we feel wistful

one by one as if our dreaming days were done

then God touches the leaves with golden arpeggios

and we are overcome;

the moon is lined in cream.

and when it rains it's autumn rain descends

and the earth gives forth a scent

redolent and fairylike as in the former days

past Time and memory's moss, grazed with the stillness

where we wandered

seeking no one's praise but His

who made the  october earth to be like this

a colour wheel fizzing in the cooling dark

and all the children in love with dusk,

the blue, the deep raspberry shadows.

mary angela douglas 3 september 2022;27 february 2023

THE MUSIC BEARING US ON

did we sing where everything was perishing

where night winds diminished in a different key and the white lilies

where the stars bloomed too

expiring with the dew

and the novas fell to earth invisibly

or its facsimile

in papier mache

amidst the other school projects

due the next day

at the science fairs, at the school plays

or mentioned nervously

in the oral book reports on books we chose

before the last bell arrived

the last bells...the summer rose

then we sang and it was December

and the carols lit the candles at home

and the Tree was up and festooned

bright with pear shaped bulbs in tulip colours

with multiple reflections in the icicles we flung

in colors of the borealis or stained glass in all the colours

I remember the words and the music, the feeling of singing

cresting the bright waves of music in our nativities

silver bells tucked amid the holly

silver bells rang out from the winter edged clouds

the way our childhood speaking, sparkling made clouds in the winter

air

then in all the aprils

or in graduation mays

still the feeling of the white flowers heaped

upon the revolving stage

and we were perishing in our sleep

without knowing 

were we perishing

or only vanishing line by line

our souls all along a distant chime

into the eternities with each note relinquished

floating the boat of music

going into the dream time

song after song,with those we loved

the music, bearing us on.

mary angela douglas 2 september 2022;27 february 2023