IN APRIL TO MOURN THE DEPARTURE OF MUSIC

april filtered through a broken window

letting in all that green air, all that chill cold

I learned all the notes by heart then

seated at a piano made of flowers

and in a recital, bridesmaid dress, pale raspberry.

this was when

music was still alive

out of all one cherished best

and fell into the heart

like living waters, light, and lightly

the trees dreaming early

of their soon to be blossoming.

music is blossoming too and lost

in the last maze

of sound and on,

on the petaled, the receding air, astounds,

cascading,

falling apart, undefended art

as the critical arrive

in busloads;

I will turn aside

in the last green wood

and think of old poetry

my only gold and good

phasing itself out of here

like a foreign moon enclouded

bearing the last echo, etude

of singular beauty like a cross

only Christ understood.

mary angela douglas 30 november 2022

ADIOS TO THE EMPRESS OF EVERYTHING OR A SMALL HISTORY OF FLOUNCING

the Empress of everything flounced away

an opening line for a folk dream or play

straight out of a grade school roundelay

I have long wanted to assay

having been cut down to ever pinking sheared smaller size

by so many Empri over a lifetime

and in a democracy, too.

The Empress flounced away

and as she did, the flounces of her

one off pinafore were flouncing too

each bead asparkle

needless to say

at tea for the day

given the Grand Tour of

her wardrobe 

you would have noted as I did too

a flouncy dress in every shade

and a flouncy brimmed hat to match

trimmed with the flounciest flowers

straight out of Walt Disney's

Alice in Wonderland.

snapdragon city.

years went by...

chapter two:

I saw the Empress waiting in line not at all

promoting herself to the front at the Fontainebleau

and airily she stepped on my unflounced shoe

with her hard as rock crystal one

some people she flouncily crooned

eyeballing me, with a flounce of

a much bejeweled hand

ring upon ring and pearlescent nails

and that was the last time before jail

I saw the Empress of Everything

zing a zing zing and the pie with blackbirds

in it,

make it into a cream pie

I told the deli

with rhubarb jelly

then proceeded to launch it

and went home to the telly.

feeling so welly.

just woken up

and out of that helly.

mary angela douglas 29 november 2022

SKIPPING SONG FROM A FORMER AGE

skip out on the dew swept lawns

my child my child

there where the orchids wild

endorse the moon

my child my child

there where the ghostly

hum no tune but bright angels commend

my child where the ancient harps

are ringing

there beyond Time

and belllike, singing

pass from the world so dark and grim

pass through a Dream that has no end

pass from the fleeting, Born of Him

my child my child

mary angela douglas 27 november 2022

FLEE

if you don't get out at the first surmise

they will make you believe

the ground is the sky

and the sky is the ground

and you look around

and somehow there are never

any witnesses

when you agree sugarlamb

just to get some reprieve

ambivalently they turn your

answers upside down

and softly you retract

but there's no going back

the mood turns grim

so that nothing you say may

ever be on time for the matinee

or balm on the blaming, trumped up waters

oh my bushwacked sons and daughters

no hint of

what you were before their non averrals.

all that shortfusing

of gaslighting musings

that makes you feel you are always losing

reduced to less than a tithing tenth of dimension

because of your so mild dissension

and no one to hear you cry it's a lie it's a lie

and there was no warning tag to tell you

in case of travesty, break the glass

or even if you did you are sure at last

you would be shattering yourself

who can explain these things in words

how it feels to be a captive bird

withouten any bail

or the tongue cut sparrow from that

grievous fairy tale

still there is God

God who hears their vapid showy prayers

and your gasping real one

o Flee.

they have swallowed the key

and all I was in the Mystery

every single bird call

sipping my Soul till the babies bawl

you weep in the dark dark wood

far darker than Dante's it's understood

here's my advice oh don't be nice;

just FLEE

at the first angelic opportunity

hack through the ice;

at the first fissure

believe the earthquake

believe your own eyes

your heart sinking down

is the cleanest clue ever

the penknife that only nicks you this time

later will sever.

oh may it be, never.

Trust only God.

forgive from the great distances

at rest in the hurricane's Eye,

set adrift on the peacock coloured clouds

and bourne Heavenward.

mary angela douglas 28 november 2022;7 february 2023

LEAVING TO STAY ALIVE

leaving to stay alive

I mean the Soul, alive in my Soul

it is often necessary

so often necessary

as clouds leave the skies

as rain leaves the clouds

as the consciousness in dreams

subsides as

into vaster oceans

I'm not a shiftless person

to protect where God resides

in me, like a flashpoint

a vivid Beacon guiding,

illuminating, sweeping me away

from what is untenable

in codes I must defend

I must give heed to

or perish too early

never rising again.

mary angela douglas 27 november 2022

A PALE CLOUD IN HER ROSEBUD MIND

opaque without stars

the navy darkness shines

the baby colours them in

just by dreaming, grace note

wispy smiling in her sleep

or angels guide her hands

her fists like flowers uncurl

as she makes the world on which

invisible moonliight shines

by indirection

in perfection

a pale cloud in her rosebud mind.

mary angela douglas 26 november 2022

EARTH AS A POP UP CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOK

if the earth were a pop up children's picture book

I would imagine rainbows at midnight

abalone ships at sea

no memory of history except

history as imagination

of a sunny kind

green rain in the green trees

and all the cities emerald ones

forever the sunset colours

resembling the sunrise ones

Christmas at home in every zone

the surprise of snow in april for the blossoms

only lightly dusted

cinnamon sugar on the earth loaf where the snow

starts to dissolve

the granting of all generous wishes

and the skies mauve toward evening

the music of the spheres proven

on restored little music boxes

free kaleidoscopes and cheese samples

only happy tears and taffy apples

my life as a rose with endless years

in a garden enclosed.

God having nothing to grieve over

and the same for the rest of us.

and no tests for the schoolchildren.

no making a fuss

only the golden apples rolling down

the only musts are joys

the glass mountains. nothing lost

but only found.

diamonds all over the ground.

the magical all around.

mary angela douglas 26 november 2022;7 february 2023

TOWARD YOUR FARTHER SUN

only vanishing is real, altenative

whenever the world or those you are with

tragically without warning

choose darkness over light

threatening to engulf you,

you with your one star

vanish vanish away

there are escape routes into God

where the rains have washed out

every bridge

the thought of God

sweeping you toward green pastures

away from the disasters

what once was known

as the night of the soul

has now come down to this 

luminous sudden doorway appearing

feel yourself to be clouds veering way

through the blessed and sudden peephole 

into the panoramic day

the miraculous winds

where you may begin again to hear

the music of angels coming nearer

or all that I can say is nothing

when the eclipses come

except oh Father in Heaven

please help me

please help everyone

green plants pulling up roots

toward your farther Sun.

mary angela douglas 26 november 2022;7 february 2023

DOLL LESSONS

to learn to keep a face

revealing nothing more

than a vague pleasantness

in or out of doors

to sit or stand in place

not by stealth, but Grace

to grow accustomed if need be

to the same silk dress

with faux jeweled beads

that you had on under the Tree

to imaginary teas

to please, never having to vary

just by thinking: pretty please, with a cherry

to being left for hours

to sit among the flowers

with no other company

than the teddy bears

the wilting roses sometimes

to be rained on

with no feeling

other than

here I am with my bent parasol

the rosebud mouth the same

having nothing to exclaim

forever beautiful

even when shunned

stunning in a pink lace shawl

mistaken for the angelical

having no message at all.

mary angela douglas 23 november 2022;7 february 2023

CASSANDRA

an inner glass is breaking

who let the burglars in

why do I feel my soul on waking

has no bridge to mend

all washed out the burghers cry

before the last wave comes

all of the innovators, here

beating their vapid drums

stretching my heart to breaking

and then the evening comes

the last known moon has left the sky

why does my soul awaking

look for a reason reason why

the inner glass is breaking

the sun the sun can't seem to rise

the Truth can't bear forsaking

here on the verge of enterprise

what kingdom are they making

what I foresee they just deride

born of a foolish woman's pride

but the earth the earth! is filled with lies.

and fault lines emerge from compromise

and the glass of my soul is shaking.

mary angela douglas 23 november 2022;8 february 2023

EVERYTHING SEEMED TO TURN OUT

expecting the heroes

why did we fall apart

losing faith in our lucky stars;

burying the sun

said Mandelstam

it's as if

they have buried the sun

we can no longer

do the radiant sums

I wait in simple silence

under the Advent's star

as if I could gaze that far

wondering why

by the ancient sundial reckoning

everything seemed to turn out

beyond all Cause

like the Pietas.

mary angela douglas 23 november 2022;8 february 2023

MARIGOLD SUN

you took your heart and turned it then

toward the marigold sun

thinking you were the only one

who saw it as a flower

I saw myself you turned the dials

in blinding love for hours and hours

gazing from no summits then

with no heart at all to win

only thinking, feeling then how

beauty dazzled us all

what happened to our point of view

that beauty had enough to do

just in being

now the facts are in a row

we have reaped what others sowed

thinking all there was to know

surely they already knew

but I am younger now my friend

knowing that I'll face the end

still I gaze for hours and hours

upon the marigold sun.

mary angela douglas 23 november 2022

COME BRIGHTLY UP THE WALKWAY

come brightly up the walkway

where the shadows are so fey

where the mixed violets in the woods make the

twilight of the day most vivid

time will be out of reach then 

music, more silvery

come down from the shore of it

what has made you weary?

words from the long ago

still hold the heart I know

from so long ago

not even the ghosts would

realize

they had forgotten most of it;

why they wander so

trying to be near it

to be where I dont feel

so in the way

where the grass grows ever taller

into the constellations

we always knew it could one day

where I am not like Alice smaller

floating into the garden on a flood of tears.

mary angela douglas november 22 2022

CARRY WATER UP AN UNSEEN STAIR

carry water up an unseen stair

you alone replenish the garden

o my angel, in your Juliet cap

or sit beside the small hearth in the castle

until you drowse for centuries

being mentioned isn't everything

it's being in a Dream that lasts

that counts, accounts

for Everything seedpearled

oh little girl

Be Spring in your stain glassed corner

all by yourself, rose window shade,

the lilac well of Time.

mary angela douglas 21 november 2022

YET WILL I NOT

how will you get by in the world

I said looking back at 

myself as a little girl

people already are not always

that reassuring

helping you with whatever

you're enduring

God endures.

my Grandmother said.

beyond the grass and flowers

beyond uncertain hours

God endures.

but how will you manage

when they are gone

all the dear ones 

you depended on

oh God endures.

comes back to you

when you're not sure

the voices you heard then

when you thought you were settled in

though mountains fall into the sea

quoted my Grandmother most sincerely

caring for me, my sister, too

yet will I not fear.

mary angela douglas 20 november 2022

THE RIGHT VERSION

in the early fairy stories she was regarded

as a lovely person, beloved by all

in light dresses and a sky blue shawl,

festooned with roses and maiden's hair ferns

or pictured under the crabapple tree,

her skirts billowing, feeding the small birds

but over centuries

a goblin imperfection

eroded the scenes

no one could say when, in later versions

it crept in

and heralded such surreptitious

whisperings:

she'll get her comeuppance, somehow!

tending the geese that never lay the golden eggs.

and I can't repeat what else was said.

but in my picture book she's stayed the same

under the same pale lemony moon

and nothing ruinous can mar her reign

her countenance of pearl and faint flushed flowers

her cornflower prayers from the Book of Hours;

her sudden departures in the driving rains

turn out magnificently.

you'll see.

all the golden pears shaken down

sweet and delectable, mysteriously,

the luminous angels marveling

whenever the townsfolk plot and seethe,

envision her bleak

and on the point of starving.

mary angela douglas 18 november 2022

SORRY FOR THE WAY IT GOES

Joseph sailing on his fine dream

marked in the cross hairs of his brothers

what a fine morning to be ill esteemed

in a coat of many colours.

there is the dreamer we will slay

innocent as the break of day

or sell into captivity

how much can it matter, either way

oh Joseph in a pale disguise

perhaps you wouldnt be despised

who knows

every time

I feel so sorry for the way it goes,

that story

regardless of the outcome.

mary angela douglas 16 november 2022

IT IS NO LIGHT THING, TO SPEAK OF ANGELS

the angels are formidable in battle,

the archangels

weeping over the Flood

implacable in the face of things fated

standing snowlight in the doorways

forever announcing Christ to the Madonna

in all her sweet guises.

cut into the marble of the great cathedrals

defending the realms

they are whimsical on certain Christmas cards

in the pages of the child sized books

done up in pastels

solicitous in the breeze of one candle.

but in my dreams they flame

like burnished opal

forever on the brink of revelation

or poised on the bell towers in the films

of Wim Wenders, or surging with a pale green music

when the clouds parted at Duino, for Rilke.

I have seen them roar over caverns

lamenting the death of one child

silent with upraised hand, turning the cruel to stone

I have seen them in my lost home sifting the golden apples

from the rubble

in every kind of trouble

and out of the small things that I know looms this

one star sapphire half blinding certainty:

that whether donning all the sunset colors

or assuming the bruises of thunderheads

or bearing dire tidings of all the songbirds slaughtered;

their Music, risen again

or even a single blessed Word,

thirst to our blighted ears

it is no light thing to speak of them

much less, of God, who sent them.

mary angela douglas 16 november 2022

A CRYSTALLINE FEELING IN THE AIR

a crystalline feeling in the air

the airy prelude to snow

I hear, before it is played

on the blue piano at the poles;

above the several levels of earth's atmosphere

how from that white sky tree the cold flowers

will be blooming, blooming and falling simultaneously

and deliriously happy children will count on

days at home. 

days at home.

how mystically it seemed

in the treble of those petaled snows that

God had intercepted our dreams

and freed us for a day or even longer

to stay.

to stay inside looking out

not sick, with no malaise

gazing at such transformation

dreamy and free in our dreaminess

festive to not ride the bus

with no new homework assigned

I don't think in all the world in Time

there had ever been such a happiness

watching it all turn to pearl

young as we were then,

infinite in our joy.

mary angela douglas 16 november 2022;9 feb 2023

HOW COULD THEIR JUBILATION BE CONTAINED

how could their jubilation be contained

on that cold winter night, the angels proclaiming Him

the long awaited, Jesu, the heart's best gift;

heralding wildly over the shepherd's fold

exorbitant anthems in pure gold

to proclaim, Him, the long awaited Child.

and the constellations tinkling like bells

glass bells in hindsight over the long midnight of the World.

snuggled at home on childhood's Christmas nights

how often I thought I felt that glory

when thinking in glory was possible

as if thinking in light

still now, on yet another winter's night

it comes back to me that

superb and changeling music, each time

more radiant, even more Divine.

my Saviour!

mary angela douglas 15 november 2022

TO A FRIEND WHO CALLED ME UNKIND FOR TREPIDATION REGARDING THE CROWS

they say I am remiss

because if I hear crows conversing

it makes me afraid, unless in the fairytales of Hans Andersen

it seems to me unnatural, a thing of the sorrel wind's sorcery

a warning like a darkening sky

a chill in the wind and no sun's efficacy

on any planet, nearby

and I forever, passer by.

I know I'm not the only one

to want to run whenever I see them gather

hunched in the icy trees

what birds are these

they seem to prophesy

unease, cantankerous, boding no good

making the dark woods ever darker.

I will think lighter thoughts when it is spring

and I mean no harm

when I want to ward them off

like some dire charm

may they rise again in brighter worlds

and myths

I'm sure of it, rich indigo against the gold of heaven

till then I'll ride the crest as an unwelcome guest

and cautionary, when I pass their nests

emblems of a literary sorrow,

a something left unsaid

between the living and the dead.

mary angela douglas 15 november 2022

FOR SOMETHING HE HASN'T HEARD YET

I can feel from this far distance

something going right in the Heavens

though it has yet to announce itself on earth

or maybe the messenger got lost or hurt

or maybe it's just too hard for us, being simple

to decipher the sky writing.

who can say why

like angels, passing by

I feel it glistening

like God listening

to each breath in between

our faltering words for something He still

hasn't heard yet,

in the World.

mary angela douglas 14 november 2022

ALL THE COLOURS SINGING ON

let there be Light

though a billion candle snuffers out

wait in the wings, chomping at the bit

to cancel it

let there be Light

though choking shadows memorize their lines

to strangle it all in vines of ridicule

eclipsing all that's jeweled

don't pretend that it is otherwise

when you give all your heart

and then you see the darts flying through

a soon vacated room and it's high noon

stay out of the way

of the slayers when they slay

reside in God

Who's seen it all before

at every brightening door

and all inclement wars

let Light arrive to settle the score

with Love

and angels by her side with the Heaven sent Dove

on every Christmas Day

to shine it all away

the fears you feel inside

whenever they deride

and plan it to the max

no glory's coming back

to show us what we lack

but they are wrong

and I will join the throng

a billion light years strong

with all the colours singing

on

mary angela douglas 14 november 2022

THE SUN IN A YELLOW PARACHUTE SLIPPED DOWN

the sun in a yellow parachute slipped down

the southmost sky to a hidden lost and found

will you bury the sun?

I said to no one.

it can't be done.

the moon at her slipper soft loom

was weaving pearls

on a shipwrecked night

she fell from sight

into a dreamless world

go and tell me when

you'll excavate the winds

that blew her far away

in a slipshod day that saw no dawn

is it under the lawns of snow

the roses have to go

or only Christ instead

his heart of heavy lead arose pure gold

dont say that you dont know

we're

destined to go on

like a ladder with its rungs

and you'll climb every one

before your life is done

before your life is done

mary angela douglas 14 november 2022;10 february 2023

STUMBLING INTO YOU

if there weren't

eyes in the hurricanes

lights on the rim of Space

fragrance as of flowers

remembrance of the dear things past

still we could find our way

through the hypercritical alleys

the blind siding mazes

such disquieting dreams

the infinite disguises cruelly cast

stumbling into You oh Lord,

at last.

mary angela douglas 13 november 2022

GREEN INK

Lord that I may not squander these Saturday graces

caught in the dream of dreaming only

like faint stars in the spiraling nebulaes

their own motion deferred

these fleeting days like fleeing birds

oh let me net without regret and sighing

let me awake early or late

with all my heart vying to hear

your music of fine beginnings

never thinking of the endings

fountainhead, headwaters shine

and beckon again, this time

though it grows late

winter does not on autumn wait

may I arise

seeking lost beauty my enterprise

and chronicle it all

in small handwriting

green ink upon the strand.

the last wave home.

mary angela douglas 12 november 2022

AND THE RIVER TOO

collapsing the towers within myself

I swallowed the bitter ground

the pink and blue crenellations

the sudden upsurge of larks

the varicoloured clouds, in their flight.

and teakettle mornings.

they say villagers in some cases

slated to be captive. stayed up all night

changing their folkloric homes to mist

the little green gates

consigning the grain to stubble

swallowing both riverbank and meadow;

finally the river too.

that the marauders should have

no place to settle

not even air to breathe;

the fable of the pancake

rolling away.

mary angela douglas 12 november 2022;11 februaey 2023

ONSTAGE

it strains all credulity you said

in the middle of the day

that you find unbelievable

whatever's in your way

why shouldnt it be believed.

I walked away.

I thought about many things that day.

how much there seems in this world

an endless correction of our thoughts and feelings

as though we had somehow fallen afoul 

of ever possibly saying something right out loud

to please whoever is halfway listening

ready to pounce on even an ounce 

of observation.

oh surely on no stage at all

would anyone consent to play

this part

of a battered heart.

isn't that always the prologue to the dissonant music

or closing the matinee down

mary angela douglas 12 november 2022;11 february 2023

THAT CHEKOVIAN SUMMER

that Chekovian summer split apart

the soul going down one pathway

down the other way, the heart

such things are conclusive

keeping in mind the historical moment

or the moment when starlight fled

hiding her face on the other side of the earth.

nameless, among shadows.

absent in the evenings,

fading from view.

mary angela douglas 11 november 2022;11 february 2023

THE CHANGE IN THE AIR THAT SIGNALS DEFEAT

in the looking glass we sought to know

how everything had turned to snow

and how the crystals in the air

had formed into a pattern there

a web so hard it could not break

a web of delicate mistakes

ice at the portal we once knew

where hidden glory shone right through

now all transparency is gone

from mirrored light and ancient song

no more renewed.

and we will weep but not in stars

and sleep. dreamless.

far from all of this.

noting the change in the air

that signals defeat

played tinly on the party favor trumpets

with a slight flourish.

mary angela douglas 11 november 2022;11 february 2023

MY FAVORITE STAR

my favorite star is very far

little blue white, white blue dwarfie

behind a bunch of star clouds at 

the back of the closet

the youngest to grow up in the serious universe

it hides behind a whole lotta tinsel

God hasn't even begun to use up yet

it likes it back there by the fairy lights

the clay bright models of the first nebulae

God likes it there

it's His favorite star too

He watches it do crooked cartwheels

my star, He calls out fondly

in several slightly gilded rose dust languages

I'll never transcribe:

the last one to hit the bricks.

meteorily speaking.

then it twinkles more

my star, in my Sunday best appearing

and sends out rogue tiny beams

faintly through the trees

mixing with the fireflies

of a forest Im not quite sure of

the scientists will never find it

nor the amateurs sleuthing.

on cold nights when the air is most clear

and everyone and their cat is out in the backyard

of the world with their telescopes trained on the

soon to be milky sky  

now biding its snows

it hides in God's supersugarplum pocket.

waiting for Christmas to come

and with a wish to be lilac

and warbling.

mary angela douglas 11 november 2022;11 february 2023

THEN SHOULD WE BEHOLD

so beautiful is the Tree of night...

  Pauline Hanson

then should we behold

through a fairy story peephole

the kaleidoscopic worlds

we were asked to leave behind

like unchecked luggage there, on the sidewalk.

would I be indicted 

as I was then for only mentioning them

I ask myself in the ghosting winds

and in these waning years.

who cares

they dont know everything anyway

some child's refrain who had my name

echoes down the years.

live free.whisper the mystified galaxies

not where the thieves snatched for themselves

the glass smile of the Princess, remember?

live where the meadow roses grow so multifoliate

on their own

uncultivated

on planets with several suns

and all of them meshing sunset impearled

myriads of them like clockwork jewels

going down in the West

we thought we knew or merely dreamed we did

when we were the guests

and the crooning moon

you could never reach

on any exterior expedition

says in soft serve vanilla or burnished peach to you only

reach now, pick the gilded apple

unbidden from the Tree of Night

and Beauty blighted, new leaved

the tearstained reprieve

of the immutable Easter.

mary angela douglas 10 november 2022;11 february 2023

A PAUSE IN THE MAELSTROM, AN OUTBREAK OF STARS

a pause in the maelstrom, an outbreak of stars

the moon gliding through translucent clouds

I keep the lace of it now as I did when I was 19

19, in the green unknowing 

of the mauve flowers cupping the snows

in the school's quadrangle, the tulip tree,

early April, with the music interrupted

someone's violin practice through an open window,

suddenly I am that too, remembering

lingering there, at school

in between worlds and worlds

the golden fables in my head

then to you oh Lord I pledged my

small insistent flag as unto the Living Word

over the field of language even if unheard forever

the early ache from home, departing,

still present, all prescience and little else yet

keeping in the inner worlds alive

after all, all this Time, now at 71

time lapsing in the keener winds:

the rushing of the stars, visibly shaken.

mary angela douglas 10 november 2022

SMALL FABLE: THE NIGHT SHED STARS

I will shed stars like the trees shed leaves

said night to herself pondering everything

then all the children will rake up the stars

and their faces will glow with me with

what is left of me that was brightest, that was good.

it will be this way,

and then it wont ever be again

the dews gathered until dawn

it was night weeping her lights away.

the autumn cried.

but the children were happy

in the morning.

mary angela douglas 9 november 2022

I STOOD IN THE BRANDED WOODS

I stood in the branded woods

that were all aflame

with the fairy light so often now disdained

reframed, given other names and quelled.

who were the listeners oh dear de la mare

who listened to squelch rare beauty everywhere

the hordes.

still in the woods I find the old despairs

the retreating horns of Elfland.

Rise! take up arms again, you fractured angel hosts

and ford the mossy banks of

what I loved the most

about my mother's words, my grandparents heraldry

the seas of imagination cannot ebb.

eternally.

mary angela douglas 9 november 2022

RAGGEDY, THEN AND NOW

every now and then when I watch the news 

or even just look out on the day I say to myself

I wonder what Raggedy Ann would do

sometimes I think she would just run away

not even gesturing with her sweet cloth hands

her peppermint striped legs flying willy and nilly

to try to get into the NASA training program

to launch into outer space and then just

mysteriously not come back

but other times I see her on the same

even track

always smiling

never saying anything but I love you

and that, telepathically

in the same blue and pink sprigged dress and the same hairstyle

orangey red yarn, tres low maintenance

keeping life simple 

ignoring all complications

getting stitched up now and then.

she could handle it.

she always was such a good friend.

mary angela douglas 8 november 2022

IN THE BLUE COUNTRIES OR SOMEWHERE ELSE INSTEAD

in deserts we dream of the countries in blue

the border of rain

but in the gully washers we dream of one dry leaf

and we store ourselves under it, one fern

containing just enough moisture to still retain the green

we dream what we lack

sometimes intercepted by what we dont want to look back on

who controls the transmissions of dreams why is the signal

like a departing music a beckoning light that disappears

you wonder when you're not too tired under the leaf of green

while you are still here wandering between the kitchenette

and the enchanted woods

making your picnic plans for

what isn't at all clear but must be good?

the plans of ferns beginning to curl a little

the plans of the blue countries 

training to breathe underwater

the plans of the distant longing to be near

or the near waiting to be far

in valleys brim full of roses and alpine stars and

the sharp points of fir trees on the pop up Christmas card

let glitter equal snow and ice.

mary angela douglas 8 november 2022

AN INCANDESCENT WORLD

an incandescent world

rainbow bubble pearled

to which we might still belong

despite the broken veined histories

and penitence prolonged

just for chipping the crockery

at the geological dig.

we children dreamed it all, dickery dockery

but we could not claim it

so we just were it

for awhile, cutting our paper dolls from the newspapers

painted over in milky pastels

or dreamed of it in little bits shining

magpie caught and silvery shelled

something beneficent longed for

in the dream clouds, swaying the trees

the spears of grass at our knees

the silent chivalries beyond all ken

whenever we walked toward, when?

through the red clover. 

it's not on any map they rolled down for us at school

you cannot compare apples to oranges

and pinpoint it at all on the dunce crowned stools

or even pronounce its name when the late rains

collect in the nightshade lanes and you are tardy

but you feel it, just the same.

so apple blossomed, framed

forever there in the time lapsing picture

the world you thought you were in to begin with.

one thousand Springs away

in the filmy distances, young sprouts

on their way, as my Grandfather would say

playing hide and go seek

by the light of the Milky Way.

mary angela douglas 6 november 2022