OPUS

For Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

there where icicles break off the stars

in the winter palaces of all my days

I will forever praise

those who find glory in the dust of days

and raise the beams of the house forsaken,

of holy art above the labyrinthian ways

that crush

the coroded majesties

the ache of the machinery of the heart breaking down

who do not bow down

to the dark drone of days enforced beyond

human endurance

manufactured for the populace

by those without grace

as though it were to be expected

but find inexplicably

all the banished radiances of God

who only extract the honey from the dirge

who see forever May

from the dingiest rooftops and fly

and draw from the dry wells

the quenching water of dreams

though they feel perhaps themselves to be

the last  redeemed

who fight for every gleam of

gold in the rubble

infinity in the icarian suns

mary angela douglas 1 june 2023

KABAKOVIAN ETUDE NO. 1

 

such a person cannot perish really

forever he must find the exact right galoshes

for the lone corner of the room

where the sun almost comes in

where it has been painted, slightly maroon

and brush the cobwebs carefully

noting it down in a new album

in impeccable handwriting

today I took care of the cobwebs

holding the world together as if with sudden Luna moths

in my nearly broken hands

one could imagine this forever

an artist could come or an angel

on the same day and forge diamonds

out of the air down by the baseboards

where the smaller kingdoms are

or in one swathe of the picture

where it was blue green for a day

where the drabness was

interrupted by the candy wrapper fairy tale

that stayed.

mary angela douglas 31 may 2023

LIGHT DWINDLES WHERE WE'RE ASKED TO INSPECT THE NAMES

 light dwindles where we're asked to inspect the names

on all the labels sorting all the claims

is this for the good of the nation I inquired

step back into the choir;you're all the same

you're all he same you're all the same;

only the chatbot sang.

mary angela douglas 31 may 2023

STORY PREMISE

 

What if all the late night comedians

ate something funky and suddenly over night

reverted to their third grade selves

and couldnt stop telling purple elephant jokes

and it became like a happy lite summer plague

and we all started wolfing down purple cow floats

and were giggling

and the CDC was giggling  too

and doubling over with laughter

and we all flew away in purple balloons

and even that couldnt be

turned into a disaster

we were having so much fun.

mary angela douglas 30 may 2023

THE ANGELS OUTSIDE THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE

for Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

the angels outside the frame of the picture 

have fallen outside on the lawn at daybreak

or from a strawberry moon

who can imagine how

but there it is

and there's another one with half a broken wing

The Angel of Crockery.

no circus this,

else would I be remiss

there really are holes in Heaven

where this came to pass

and we are half witnesses again

crowding subtly into the museums

a little unearthly ourselves.

mary angela douglas 30 may 2023

on Ilya Kabkov's  random devotion to angels

THE FUTURE'S INSTALLATION BY KABAKOV

for Ilya and Emilia Kabakov 

one crystal angel

beyond the future

will be hanging his newest installation from a star 

or perhaps a noted constellation

Orion let us say

the hunter of things whimsical and sorrowful

at the same time

we may float in gold and white and silken balloons

up there to see it

and a forbidding angel perhaps will say

go back

it's not time yet

for the future of these things

to be perceived.

mary angela douglas 30 may 2023

TEN CHARACTERS

for Ilya Kabakov, another fragmented elegy

 

who captured radiance

and kept it not prisoner

adored by visitors

to the scene of its implosions in

the longitude and latitude

of intensely small rooms

escaped from or

anyway, here they dreamed

the fictional surpassing the living.

their deceased friend mourned.

escape velocity from all albums.

mary angela douglas 29 may 2023

KABAKOVIAN: AFTERMIRAGE

 

paintings about the sun

captured on gold foil days

now will not come to pass

adorned in crystal and glass

and rustic wind chimes.

perhaps in the upper atmosphere

angels will sing on violet wires

and nothing beautiful will expire

and installations will go on spinning,

the moons of other planets.

mary angela douglas 29 may 2023

NOT EVERYONE WILL STAND

 

not everyone will stand

some people will sit

some crouch below jeweled mines

some people will be enthroned;

sent gaudy valentines.

some people will toss, on the stone or dirt floor

in their sleep making their mothers weep

yet making music beautiful again;or art

or under a sullen bridge departing

or where the odd trestle gleams

having more dreams than nightmares

having more nightmares than dreams

some from ludicrous battles unclasped

victory at last over the clouds

some people will fall over

dead from no sleep into fields of clover

or the Elysian

their golden dogs inconsolable. some

in prison cells

or anywhere they feel unwell

others will collapse

just like that loaded down with flowers

that none but them can see

and be time lapsed into Eternity

some people dissolving in the seas

of old maps.

over all,

the same silver coin of a moon.

angels hushing the skies.

a month of no rain

mary angela douglas 29 may 2023

ROSE BOUQUET

 

we who abandoned so many things

without even knowing

with no one showing us how not to

our milk money for school, report cards

old patent leather shoes, when we went over the pavements of

dream

again and again so as not to lose the way

crayons, water colour sets by Prang

whole pages where we sorted the apples from the oranges

in mimeographed blue

the church bells rang and it was Christmas

or Easter too;what happened to you oh chiming, charming

sounds. we looked for you all around, with the hyacinths.

old pencils inscribed with business names

sharpened to a gleam in myriad colours, No. 2

plaid portfolios, weather proof of stick figures

little houses and with the sun's rays

clearly indicated, chocolate, on coming home.

somewhere may it be all gathered up

presented to us like a rose bouquet

on a distant day

in Heaven.

mary angela douglas 29 may 2023

ON MIRACLES INSTEAD

heaven's blessing on the picture books

that helped me to remember through all decades

the little house surrounded by apple blooms

was real

in the picture the clouds outlined in sky blue

and as you turned the pages

yes each season was real

outlined in red and gold

in the pink and blue the violet of shaded snows

in summers' green gold effervescence

and with a bottle of strawberry pop

I can tell you

I was not born to collect the facts

the facts that flatten the world

more than any cartologist could do

in fanciful centuries

and neither should you

when everything is built

on miracles instead.

oh don't be misled

by anyone's stark opinion

to the contrary.

mary angela douglas 28 may 2023

ALICE GOING INTO THE PICTURE, ELEGY FOR ILYA KABAKOV, MAY 27, 2023

 

alice going into the picture he once said in an interview

how the installation should be, not only seem or into a series of rooms

and paintings, sad, little wistful stories in bloom

you with your own memories finding solace, the visitor

to the exhibit, happily confused, made to feel at home

otherwise neither

here nor there, suddenly, here where an apartment astronaut

lodges no longer here to pay for repairs to the ceiling

wont the neighbors be upset at the man who never threw

anything away

or there when floating upwards with Emilia into a barely sketched in sky

a lightness beyond Light itself known to you suddenly, as your own

like the palms of your own hands

green varnish on the baseboards an angel or only the wings framed

as evidence of Heaven where we trust you are now

admitted by Michelangelo or Van Gogh or all the people whose

names I don't know.

thank you for leaving so many things behind otherwise we wouldn't have known

would not have found at the great museums this expanded universe

the invisible shining, almost revealed floor to staircase going to the clouds attached

of art and story and wild illumination

surely the angels will inhabit now.

where else would they go?

mary angela douglas 28 may 2023

CUE THE MACHINES

CUE THE MACHINES


perhaps on some future blank hearted day

we will give it all up

and let the machines do our weeping for us

wait! what but why wait

already has begun the preeminence

of the marshalling of facts

the absence of singing

the lilac is a fact

it is a flower crooned the child

no longer crooned to,

heart shamed leaves cut back

peripheral data, the lilac

pruned back perfumeless now

under L

for lies, ludicrous, or U, unnecssary being

what is the point of lilacs?

it is flowers whispered the child

sentenced to the corners of classrooms in the postmodern style

wearing the dunce cap of dingy dreamers

for love of the lilac with a note sent home.

do not love. curate instead

but it's a flower

I give you my sprig of lilac

a rap on the head

the lilac child is dead.

cue the machines

weeping and weeping.

mary angela douglas 26 may 2023

STRANGE WEATHER

 

it seems the clouds are leaving town

no rain is raining all around

strange weather.

people speak into the wind

not to be heard of ever again

strange weather

weather, weather vane

spinning lies

love is a private enterprise

shipped overseas

and I can tell you more than these

scenarios exist

when those who favor happiness

bright song, are taught and taught that they are wrong

strange weather.

human kindness quite disguised

seeks to silence passionate discourse

rants they call it, but I say

where beauty's missing

God's away 

driven out by charlatans.

everything you once believed

now they're putting on the squeeze

sunny days disparaged.

and a faithful marriage

childhood without innocence

fence sitters on a barbed wire fence

won't move, even then.

the sky inverted like a cheap umbrella.

strange weather.

mary angela douglas 26 may 2023

THE PRAYER IN IMPENETRABLE DARKNESS

 

wherever in darkness they put the light out

oh God be our eyes

wherever there is ridicule masked as conversation

dear God carry us away from the devastations

and if we must speak let it be only to You

who have been through it all yourself.

mary angela douglas 25 may 2023

RAY BRADBURY WALKS AT MIDNIGHT

sonorous cackling zig zags from Mars

no Katys bar the door nor John Houston

I won't be turned into an institution

pure sunshine cant be deplored

from sea to shining shore

every dinosaur turns to gold.

Waukegan won't be bought and sold

to the highest bidder.

nor Green Town torched.

I wont get off the porch.

you can bet on it.

God knows how he broke the mould.

and it is broken still;

Ray Bradbury walks at midnight.

not like a toothless zombie, that's for sure

not like something you could procure

when you're seeking eternal tenure

and you don't care how

profiteers galore, dont you know what livings for

a little rococo with his cocoa and grilled cheese...

feel a buckling at the knees, he teases.

Old Bradbury stalks these halls

in brand new tennis shoes and all

a mock apprentice to the embalmers

P is for platypus he snickers

C is for comeuppance

all you scholars in knickers

I was before your Time

undestined to be your candied mine

oh let the miners flee

God of my destiny

in heaven as on the earth

he said with growing mirth.

I hear diaphanous laughter:

formaldehyde away you bastards!

he sings in a sea shanty way

microscopes and flasks

I know you didn't ask

but you won't find me like that

and make me into your hand fed amoeba.

I wasn't your Mummy on earth

and I'm sure not your Mummy now.

mary angela douglas 24 may 2023

STILL THEY SPEAK OF SHAKESPEARE

still they speak of Shakespeare in a brightening hour

but we leave disappointed

since they only mean their power,

the power to distort at least to, bye and bye

his brilliant fire and eloquence

to fit the currrent lies

and we who heard him early

or read a little late

can spot the game's afoot

to shut up heaven's gates

that let in so much beauty

sheer magnitude enthralled

it irks them that their small gift

compared, is not at all.

let them drain the coffers

of the language we hold dear

they only live to celebrate

themselves from year to year.

but there's a reckoning to be sure

and beauty will unmarred endure

nor bear a scar from those who sneer

who care not at all for literature

oh let me make that clear.

mary angela douglas 24 may 2023

AWASH IN GREEN COMETS HOW COULD I WISH TO LIVE

for my sister, Sharon F. Douglas

starpoint. seemingly fixed in one place

I cannot address you as Keats could

I'm not that person when I know the stars

are imprint

emblems of a slowly vanishing blueprint,

awash in green comets how could I wish to live

anticipating the end

when I love too much the green of earth

and the May nights

the way that they were then

when every star to my imagination

was a white rose blossoming,

fragrant in the bouquets of Heaven

and I could whisper Endymion

like the thread of silver through the world

of unfinished letters, the aftermirage of saints.

now we are accounted quaint that we love old poetry

more than we dread the news

but I can tell you it may happen again

that the heavens blaze in the sounding board of an intrepid piano

reechoing Schumann

played as if we were only the Song

God, Himself, had waited on.

mary angela douglas 24 may 2023

IN ADVANCE OF PARTING

to my sister, passing away wherever. whenever that may be

 for Sharon Foster Douglas

There be none of beauty's daughters with a magic like Thee.

Lord Byron, Stanzas for Music

there's an emptiness as if half the stars have left the sky

and someone says off camera in the third person: theyll not be coming back

as if the sails can no longer tack

as if all hearts are split asunder

in all the lands there are down under 

and the fairytale kingdoms wax and wane

and Pluto's bride a hyacinth becomes

and the last wave arising like a dragon cloud

takes up the whole horizon and is booming now

I have lost my chart the key to curtained chambers in the dark

where there are no presentiments but only blessed sleep;

no shell of a document is going to tell me where she is;

I can't speak in my native tongue even as it is

for nothing is native now

that a sense of absence mars the Sun

but music, endless music pouring from her small hands.

long summer afternoons in the piano studio of my Grandmother.

mary angela douglas 23 may 2023

THE CANON AT RISK

cathedral classics out on the lawn

what is the planet I'm living on

libraries discard sheer bars of gold

doing whatever the nonsense

they're told

so we in the hinterlands

measure the space

that's left on the shelves

where the jewels were erased

and shore up our libraries

here at home

to feast at the table

that's been disowned.

mary angela douglas 23 may 2023

HOW IT ALL HAPPENED AT THE TOOTSIE ROLL CENTER OF THE EARTH

oh dear the matter is

I don't know why

we're suddenly tilting

into the skies

topaz at sunset

and I want to cry

centrifuge spinning

and all the controls

teacups are sloshing

it's starting to snow

the dog in its kennel

is leaving the yard

and I can't stop singing

it's getting too hard

to hold up my end of the strange conversation

I'm cutting the cake

but they're eating my ration

my name is Alice

or haven't you guessed

I'm new at the party

and yet not a guest

I want to wake up

on the clear other side

and just be the bridesmaid

and never the bride

the night lights are dimming

the afternoon's cold

and I am too witty

all's glitter, not gold.

my address is lost

where the angels all are

don't say that I'm missing

just say I slipped far.

and almost got socked with Ray Bradbury's JAR

and welcomed the fireflies

and all of the clouds

and I must be going

I'm talking too loud.

mary angela douglas 23 may 2023

AROUND THE FAIRYTALE'S GEMSTONED PAGE (FINAL VERSION)

 

[to my Grandmother, Lucy W. Young, my Grandfather Milton B. Young and to Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, among others...thank you! and thanks are due to God since as a friend once said, "God gives us the fairytales to show us the way home... "(P.S. To my mother too, of course. Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas, who spoke in syllables of strawberry and utter cream all the time. really.), my charming sister too, daughter of music, Sharon)

around the fairytale's gem-stoned page are sun splattered leaves and berries softening the borders ferny angels lightly penciled in beyond the trees that shift like pedaled dreams 

on the dream piano of the pale blue country lined with gold I pray to someday rescue if I can- pure swans down drifts down these elaborate Capitals on every sunset's page the 

swans revert to children and are saved on the one rock left in the water coloured whirlpools of their sea- and I skip backwards to a small green house with spearmint strip-ed 

awnings or a pink- beige brick with picture windows and mimosa trees... you can't fade away along the borders flushed with glaced roses I won't let you- and every time 

i close my eyes the skies are pleated with your swans the ruby candlestick in Beauty's room drips very lime-green wax all over my small table with the circus scenes. maybe 

for childhood's jam-spooned days, alone, they gathered all those startling coronations, words of best green velvet, I don't know how else the carriage came to be cut from the 

creamy rind of citrus afternoons as if with the golden scissors of a King Hans Christian Andersen it's still me wavering in a pink embroidered dress and golden slippers, 

wobbling near the icy angels with their candle spun whispering as they say: rework the hidden brocades now of all lost feelings, places, courtiers, things- in snowy silence 

heaped with silver lilies...shine... I can't break faith with the fairytale task till vaster kingdoms come and my sister's perfect Chopin bubble clears the pink-white-red azaleaed 

fence while the clouds keep billowing out beneath their clothespins the milk makes butter islands in the oatmeal until- the last sweet early peas are sorted satisfactorily 

from the Milky Way and kept in the stoppered bottle on our etagere, the one the colour of ashes of roses... but will they turn to diamonds in the end or chicken pie you may well 

wonder when the curtains close... Grandmother's playing Liebestraum again in her rose taffeta on a pine green taffeta staff she turned to diamond music in the end taking my 

Grandfather's arm and heading upward without her pearl opera glasses but with the Psalms all double scored in moonlight... the day winds down like antique toys in soft 

yellow chenille- the jeweled heart sifts in the furnace the tin soldier cannot reach the tabletop... someday I will learn to live expecting better swans and in your names I'll find the 

lemon latitudes so fine of the summers everywhere now- of the hidden mermaids with a sainted love dissolving into foam... 

mary angela douglas 5 april 2011

SOMETHING MY GRANDMOTHER COULD HAVE SAID WHEN THE CARPOOL TOLD ME CALIFORNIA WAS SLIDING INTO THE SEA IN 1957

 

what will we do when we're sliding into the sea

will we still be writing poetry

will we sup on one last caramel sundae

or fix our gaze on Mars

or smuggle a candy bar into Heaven

or one floor down

will we look around to see what the neighbors are doing

I think not.

mary angela douglas 22 may 2023

RESPITE

so was all heartache once removed

sorting the starlight from the doom

remembering the roses of saints

and not the catacombs:

small maji: we journeyed across

the infinite palm of God.

mary angela douglas 22 may 2023

SPEAKING ENGLISH (FINAL VERSION WITH FINAL LINE BREAKS)

(to the very green memory of the English Romantic Poets)

courting the fair lost wonder of the skies

the ghosts of English poets stood out in the rain

wondering what happened to the world edged all around in gold;

edged all around in gold, who bartered what for what and keyed it all down

so softly, by degrees in the pearl smudged day we hardly noticed when

the Word left glistening, alone as though it had never been spoken into green.

let the faery ferns bend down their fronds through these wrecked dells,

now out-of-the-way and the musk roses sigh in the Borderlands that

even light dwindles, dividing itself into itself and praising nothing.

O eglantine! O mild musk roses blowing… 

brief Tyrian clouds above the foaming cliffs were mine,

but they swept by my childhood's aching that denied-not real enough,

was said. leaving me nothing more to say at school but to hobble on,

ever-after with the clipped birds from my hocked fairytales

their scissors sawed part-through; I'll never be real without them- 

who wants to be baked inside a very tasty gingerbread by the witchy experts

stealing the names that color the soul- this has always been

oh my little, little child. pretending to grow wiser you'll escape even farther

into the woods of gold and silver embossing-

 pure silence gathers stars.

and treasured there you're a better country without bitterness…

this is the part of the story where you disappear,

like a pearl in the pearl of mist or cloud

still owned by God and safe from lies. It shall be so. 

till the day you can come back with all the light-rescinded years,

the hollowed out, hallowed rinds of suns and snows, the wayward sparrows glinting

in the shadows not in vogue Oh God what's singing for

or speaking-

if it isn't this: to brand on the wasted heart incessant amazement- 

to be leased by God. 

you'll wake to wonder, too, so all- at-once to see

each drowsing castle in familiar mists of rose: 

the small house in the clearing brimmed with Christmas lights,

the bright fields sown

of the full-throated music you did not disown=

mary angela douglas 11-12 december 2011

ON DECK OR BELOW

 

peering out the porthole of the poem

I wonder will it be smooth sailing

of course, the ship is mine

and we have traveled many times this way

in the middle of the day or late at night

and the air is so fine

fish will arc against the horizon on the moon tides

rainbow coloured fish and glittering

and seagulls cry no longer in a foreign language

the waves are calm

the sun as bright as in grade school readers

or Midas gold

and I am glad so glad for the chance to watch the sea

of them

billow and roll my poems my poems

always gliding home.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

COLOURING LANDS

 

I will take the rose red crayon and break it over a vanishing kingdom

that it may end in beauty after all

in colouring land

except that the marigold crayon is missing

and the sun won't shine till it is filled in

I coloured neatly for the most part

only a little straying outside the lines

when I spilled my cocoa

or when the grilled cheese

got a little too greasy

on Saturday evenings, or Sunday was it

let's go back and colour the evergreens evergreen

or blue green as it was then

leaving a blank space for the snow

imagining the iridescence

long ago.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

IN WHICH WE HAVE AN EMBARRASSING INCIDENT IN THE 7TH GRADE WHILE DAYDREAMING OVER DICKENS WITH AN EMBELLISHING IMAGINATION

it's citron and nutmeg and orange peel they say

Miss Havisham's cake on her special day

with marzipan rosettes and raspberry cream

on alternate layers

a sight to be seen

to eat with fresh cordial

on bright crystal plates

I'm ready to dig in

oh boy! I can't wait

too bad for the spiders and ghosts on the prowl

and then I get called on, and my stomach growls.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

IN THE FACTORIES OF LIGHT

 

we worked hard in the factories of light

alternating shifts

learning to breathe like this

underwater, sipping coffee

when will we get to the end

I can't even pretend to be awake anymore

we laughed and kept going.

some of us slumped at our posts

friends with the Holy Ghost.

surely God in his might

soon will let us take flight

clocking it in at last

freed from the working past.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

THE KING AND NOT THE KING

 

the king and not the king

a silver thought flashed forlornly

the king and not...

enthroned without angels

having forgot

his own names

the king and not the king

over an ancient kingdom reigns

nowhere in history found and crowned

on a cold day, with leaves blowing through

the aisles of the supermarkets

men taking cherry trollies to the moon

the king and not the king

the lemon curd moon and the stars

can't tell you who you are

decreed, decrees 

only the breeze

and then I woke up.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

ON HEARING A STAR JUST SWALLOWED A PLANET

 

have the planets come so far

to be eaten by the stars

I was home when the word came through

a star just chomped a planet whew!

that was a close one.

I must say and this I mean

I find it most discomfiting

to think of this scenario

I'm glad we've got

5 billion years to go.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

I WISH I HAD NOT

 

pear tree partridge

how happy I was to learn about you

one spring, home sick from school

finding you out of season in a storybook.

feeling better, with gingerale

I memorized all the lines

the music too

with a scratchy throat

praised by my grandparents

singing the golden rings

into the faint and april light

beyond my curtains.

how was I to know that simple day

emblazoned would come back to me

along with your song.

all your dancers have moved on.

your pipers too.

and the telling swans.

I wish I had not.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

FROM A SUMMER DIARY AFTER THE MANNER OF JANACEK

 

for the blackberry paths I never wandered down

in all the summers melting my hands

I leave this scrapbook, souvenir

by pale moonlight, Titania

sing the echoes in my head

and the air scented with roses and gardenias

by the fairytale clock tower sings:

the hour is late

is always when

no matter when you wake onstage

for your little bit

the heart can only hold

so much time

and no carriage fairytale spokes

may make up the difference between

the spoken and the Unseen

in all this banishing

no matter how fast they twinkled.

I could have had a pale green sunhat

straw into gold made

filled with blackberries

and later fine cream

to pour over them

one Sunday

but already

the fated winds had shaken 

all the flowering trees

evicting us from the rose gardens.

leaving no clues in the clouds.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

AN OLD STORY AND A SKY BLUE CRAYON

bluebird bluebird

where have you gone

while I was standing out here on the lawn

the blue angels came to kidnap you

and children cried oh what can we do

and hamelin opened its chilly doors

and you oh you were seen no more

I will go with nets of gold

into the freezing night so cold

and search the north wind

the bought and sold

for the children weeping what can we do

will never be happy

without you.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

THE BEAUTIFUL MECHANISM WINDING DOWN

(for the Emperor's nightingale;for Hans Christian Andersen)

the beautiful mechanism winding down

where is the jeweler he can't be found in all the kingdoms

all around to make the predictable song go round again

and the emperor is dying

there where the key melts in the lock

and none of the clocks can fix the times

to when in sheer and pearl design

of startling variety, consolation

the real nightingale healed.

creep close in the gardens

for Death has come

ready to seize

him by the throat

all for the want of one true note

suddenly, a glory in the moonrise

the real nightingale espied

warbling the dusk back into the dawns

and Death is stirred

weeping among the white roses.

he opens his eyes

and the lilac song goes on.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2023

DANCING WITH THE BREEZE

I couldn't comprehend one day in grade school

when the book asked us questions after it presented

the poem Daffodils by William Wordsworth as in

"what is the meaning of this poem...

are you kidding? I say as I look back 

but at the time I was too stunned to say anything

let me correct that now.

what does it mean you silly book.

somebody stopped asking meaningless questions for a while

and stood in silence to watch the wind whip

through fields of daffodils.

and was happy. then said person went home and thought about it.

which also created a happy feeling.

what does it mean.

how can you even ask.

at least the paper you're written on was once trees.

remember how it felt when you were a tree

and the winds came through your leaves?

I want to go home. what am I doing here.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2023

MUST THE BEAUTIFUL VANISH AWAY

 

seeing the snow patches on the ground

later and later as the sun beats down

I cannot name my sharp regret

I almost wish I'd never met

the snowlace coming down.

how chill, prosaic seems the day

with further melting I can't stay

and witness the last retreats;

loveliness again has passed

leaving me to sadly ask

how many more times in one lifetime

must the beautiful vanish away

mary angela douglas 20 may 2023

FROM THE AQUARIUM A VALEDICTORY ADDRESS, EMERITAS

 

none of this feels funny to me

stuck in the classroom aquarium, over the summer

rehearsing the games the children played

while throwing paper airplanes at each other.

now I'm a fish or think I am

and it seems to be true

and I could tell you a story or two

if you could read fish lips;sprinkle in a little fish food.

how in jr. high and high school too

it seemed that I was against the rules

by being exactly the way I was

immune to all the buzz

because I did not strive and never cared to

for holy leadership skills and confidence to the gills.

I bear no ill will.

life as a fish has been rather golden at times.

making lots of rhymes.

and my little plastic castle is to die for.

it's all the gazing in

that makes me turn my fins

how has your summer been

and all the gossip I deplore

and still have no mind for.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2023

ON THE PAINTING PRIMAVERA, BY BOTTICELLI

 

I wanted to write a poem about the painting Primavera

about a feeling I have always had since a child

when I was gathering violets in the shade

consoled in the woods by the day in its essence,

my violets I thought, so happily, for I have found them

they will always be, just mine

assigned on this april day and now the april days have fluttered down

the years of april, fleeting

my lost birds, spectacularly rose and lily entwined

all I feel is in the flowered breeze

that blows through Primavera

the dancing graces and grasses in the winds

the play of light on the mysteries

bellissima I whispered in the Arkansas woods

or would have, if I could

and I know, whatever is written about this painting

is a lie or a great misunderstanding

that an innocence is here

how could the world at large give voice to yet

the original Spring flawless and emeraldly vernal

beauty for which Christ died as the poets said

to shadow forth

it is not a lie

it is all the flowers blooming at once

and never dying

so that we never look back anymore

at the great disasters crowned in snows or ash.

and my lost violets near at hand in small nosegays still

there, where the brook must be flowing, and small moss citadels shine.

my Mama singing and singing

most beautiful among them all.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2023

COMPASS ECHOES

 

I dreamed the compass echoes through the distant trees

echo location, from the purple seas of ink that I had

spilled upon the strand in my own handwriting

the nearer to God I felt myself to be.

call it no man's land or where the words melt into stars

the memory of where you are, where you were

compared with where you hoped to be.

it isn't a vast music but it's real

configuring what you feel, what you felt

what you may feel again

upon the compass winds

in variegated colours.

a tattered map of the world.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2023

A VALENTINE FOR ELINOR WYLIE

 

I imagined a winter sky;the silver doves frozen

on the wind drawn twigs

a kind of valentine frost etched, not sent.

glazed over in the glittering day or end of days

I imagined the steps light as feathers in the new snows

barely the porch light on.

just beginning, the blank dawn.

and the unthawed toes in pale slippers

the Japanese blooming housecoat, billowing out

face unseen, slim fingers

retrieving something;perhaps the bottled cream and

the quick returning.

why am I always thinking in parables

when all I want is a warm hearth;

some days, only the pale irises in a vase.

the Holy Ghost.

I should have lived in another time

when flowers still graced the home

benevolent hosts of them

fresh from the gardens

late blooms and sturdy

before the great snows.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2023

I LOST THE COLORS OF GIOTTO (FINAL VERSION)

 

[to my grandparents who raised me, in memorium]

I lost the colors of Giotto:

the steady pouring of

earnest angels; the

forerunning fuchsia

of generations of light

and fountaining ardor.

I lost the sorrowless

carmine quiet, the

rectitude of stars lapped

in lapis lazuli

the indigo stairwell of clouds.

I lost the olive branching, the

sweet cerulean days; the small

birds gathered in the lemon wind;

I lost my place at the shell pink window

and grieved for the shimmering ladder,

misplaced;

through the vacant castle I sought so many things

but the way was fused I lost

the sunset aureoles

the unchastening wing

then it seemed that I lost Earth

and all my tears flowed upwards

in the Space where you were not: I lost

the sundial in the shade

of Your last rose

mary angela douglas 5 june 2009

THE SEAS FOREVER INDIGO IN THE MARITIME NOVELS

 

the seas forever indigo in the maritime novels,,,

will we be overblown we asked ourselves

in the first chapters, delicate as sea glass

will nations fume and pass

over the wave and spume and drown in the tides of noon

or pirates soar leaving nothing to explore

into the roar of squalls

let it be seen in the captains waterlogged logs

the substance of dreams dissolved or Shelley's poetry;

of treasures keeping company

with weird sea urchins

maps on parchment with the ink sobbing

less and less each day and the seas glassine

as they used to say: all souls on board

counted by miscreant angels.

children, vanished in the sea lanes.

will Melville live

until there is nothing left to forgive

why has everything gone away

why is the world itself a seemingly infinite shipwreck

our hearts as they were then, washed astray;

toll not for me.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2023

THE LACEMAKERS HAVE ABANDONED THE CITY

(to my mother, very good at sudden stories)

the lacemakers have abandoned the city

I start with a phrase and snow at the lattices

dreaming of Isak Dinesens opulent stories

oh, Hans Andersen! by far.

can we make one too?

and a Christmas star?

it's DIY time in the households

the wicks are turned down low

as they always should be in a portrait of long ago

and the storms clouds airly approaching

should it rain flowers then?

is this a story about lace

a young person wonders

we continue, at Time's erratic pace

the lacemakers gone, the snow continues to swirl

making a lace of its own but a poor substitute

in this case

will the princess of pearl come to wind the clocks

when Denmark is no longer the world

how can I answer when I'm making tea

the winter lasts for 300 years

and we are still here

in the house with the golden apples in the window

our stock and trade

the fairy tales we just made up.

small dinners for the dolls of

crackers and cheese.

and cherry marmalades, you added.

please.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2023

GAINING TIME

(for my sister Sharon) 

even in childhood

and early then

we had the velvet nights to spend

in playing secretly with our dolls

hushed as hushed with our bears and all

ready at the first alert

to heap them under the fortress quilts

and feign deep sleep in bunkbed city.

sometimes to laugh and spoil our chance

to add more time to the wilting hours

and all the bears just wanted  to dance

and somersault if there was a chance

but who could help laughing when the dolls were so witty

the bears so pithy I ask and I ask.

how happy we were the time to gain

I think we still can be this way

now that we're in the golden age

they say.

we had so much practice at it

when we were little.

adding time with a rose red rhyme

viewing the stars from a backyard window.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2023

IN ROMAN FIELDS WHAT GODS COULD HEAL

 

in roman fields

what gods could heal

when men were never at their ease

and citadels fell very well

flowerlike, in the faintest breeze

perhaps too easily it was said of these

in midnight frays

without attending angels

it's all ancient history now;

say those who never encounter the real

conquest of the Christ that came

how blasted hopes could not be named

and vanished until the Resurrection

catch if you can spare meanings here

his soul could never disappear

mourning the cities he had loved

the small towns and

the departing dove

from the ark of hell's vanquishing.

when Love ruled at last

in our favour.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2023

WHEN THE WORLD BECOMES SNOW

when the world becomes snow

when the silver word is spoken

I will flee all summers

seeking the coolness of the blue and redeemed stars

nor wander anymore in search of any reasons

to doubt who You are

who I am before you

when the world becomes snow

the wasp like thoughts will end

the buzzing thoughts that give no peace

no gardens will be breached

we will eat the peaches cooled

in hidden springs

the mothers will settle the seams of sleep

we will go out in the dream boats

the coral striped sails will rise, the ones of infinite rose

when the world becomes snow.

on the lake of the rippling moon

shifting our cares on the shores

forever.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2023

THE BANISHED BARDS

 

its sick we are of being misconstrued

perhaps the weary and ancient bards feel blue and cheated

in more distant castles now and in a hallowed grumbling

inhabit the marble halls

whenever it comes to mind

in present classrooms that

no one cares anymore

whatever they were singing about

lilted and lilied, lamenting

or if they do it's only to twist the whole thing

into mistaken balloon shapes, something disfigured,

castoffs, from the Fair.

whatever they were singing about

through mist and fog and bog soaked to the bone

alone in the wild

and then by the hearthsides regaling

stringing the harp

and tolerated for awhile

surely cannot compare my compeers

with their hardship now

when all have abandoned the scores of former remembrance and renown

locked castle doors against the ghosts of their songs.

landlocked the glittering seas within them, surging.

you who are meh about them,

I would not meet them now

on the windy plains alone

out walking, under the louring skies.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2023

CONSIDERING THE ROMANTIC POETS IN A DESULTORY AGE

 

half in dream half in shadow

won't their words come back to me

all the poets lost, embattled

drowned in an icarian sea

so for you Beauty to have fled

beyond the common understood

flickering in an enchanted wood

and beckoning, beckoning if they could

to rouse us from all lethargy.

why should God to them impart

all the visions of the heart

what remains for us today

who've told them all to go away

as thoughtless children in our play

the prince and not the dragon, slay.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2023

FUGITIVE MUSIC, PALE GREEN AND FLED

(for Gerard Manley Hopkins)

please let them save whatever is burning

whatever, whomever is lens focused shedding

icarian wings or Springs headed northward

and then, diverted

whatever we have left unsaid

whatever flashes gold through tree limbs or scarlet,

barely budding in the april winds

in my dreams it never turns to ash

in my dreams it never turns to ash

but is quelled by snows that last

longer than life

outlasting everything

shining and shining

and laced with small bells

in the afternoons.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2023

CONTRADICTIONS

 

to observe the outward form

and neglect the inner ceremony

to place the plastic fruit

in the enameled bowl

to feast on what can never be so

to draw the parallelogram in rose

though no teacher takes note of it

to care about lineage but not to know

God

and to lose the images without which

the words have no beauty at all.

the names of childhood.

the purity of rain.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2023

IF YOU LEAVE THINGS AS THEY ARE

if you leave things as they are

I prayed to my reflection's reflection

maybe there will be less heartache

if you let the sunrise manage by itself

to rise in pink and gold

without your trying to console it

and the wind blow across your face

as if over a field of flowers

if you do not mangle all the hours

by trying too hard like  the way

you try to play the piano piece at first

all jangled, impatient to hear

what will not disappear

if you take longer to learn it.

let the sunrise be the inward color of conch shells

you never got over, the pearl of it

a marine rose you would have called it

if you had known back then.

call it now. it already exists.

you don't make, you don't have to make it yourself

you don't have to be everything. to recount it all.

you just have to turn the next page.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2023

POEM FOR SAM WELLER AN IMPRESARIO FOR SURE NOW

it is never too late for something amazing to happen

for parrot colours to show up in the sunrise

for chinese puzzles from pieces of delicate ivory to fall apart

and become the fairy tale fields and the snow drifts of the Christmas heart

for clouds edged in red violet crayon to float off the colouring book page

for  rage  to melt into cotton candy pinks and blues

for cartwheels to become once more the usual way of moving down rain

watercoloured

sidewalks in the cities, and with parasols

for stripes and polka dots to match with or without clown shoes

for families to remain in the morning light

for singed angels to emerge from the rescued books of Montag

to thank Ray Bradbury for this in person

to thank your parents and teachers by sending them valentines

in the afterlife

for the old to grow young

for the young to grow old

for the green glades in your mind to become vaster.

and filled with emerald songs.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2023

*Sam Weller, the highly acclaimed one and only official biographer of the great Ray Bradbury, (THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES: THE LIFE OF RAY BRADBURY) and brillianr author and benevolent teacher, in his own right and liberty.

I RIGHT MY VESSEL ON A SEA OF WORDS

I right my vessel on a sea of words

and every phrase is a mystery

that washes up on a deck of pearl.

how can I know, by morning,

where I will be?

when white capped foam reveals no isles to me,

blessed or otherwise.

still I long by Northern stars to be

informed of what is hidden

in the heart of me

till I arrive:

sorting the green gold waves

from the peach sunrise.

mary angela douglas 17 may 2023

PRETTY RED CARPET

new hollywood frets for the right to win awards

the ghosts of old extras are bemused

is this the news

and start a jamboree

for what's gonna happen to little old me

absent the parades

the accoladian accolades

be free

just be

it certainly must be

more fun to watch the movies

than to be in them but oooowhee

I am bored.

I want to be up for an award.

and I want it guaranteed.

mary angela douglas 17 may 2023

HOW FAR THE WEATHER COMES TO FIND US

 

how far the weather comes to find us

the song like an errant arrow of blue

that in the storm has lashed my soul to you only

Father, dreamer of us all

how far the stars and yet

we remember them so emphatically in daylight 

when the moon fades out from the blue

how far the light comes to find us through the glooms

the green mists parting

the Light in your pronunciation

has stirred the whirlpools of our sleep

and fastened the falls of music to the rock cliffs

where they tumble, cascading forever

over the precipice we were so afraid of.

mary angela douglas 17 may 2023