under wide Heaven
such a narrow strip of land
sometimes oh Father
all we have is Your Hand
your hand to snatch us
from the assaulting wave
we cry from the distance
oh God please come save
all that is left here
last leaf on the tree
oh God my Father
remember me.
mary angela douglas 31 july 2023
Yeats had many roses
and all the roses gone
the letters back and forth
the letters never won except in Song
all the defeats shone in glory
all the defeats were in the rhymes
born of sorrow, the mists of Time
endlessly translated
flowering into dead winter
trailing again the afterswans
ever and ever
the rose red hem
all he asked was the Mystery of them
all the roses cherished, declined
save where Christ climbed.
mythos and beauty reigning.
mary angela douglas 31 july 2023
no I am not a robot
R U a robot asking me
if I am a robot
something about this
seems odd
you know, an anomalie.
r u an anomalie?
u dont seem to be answering the question
r u a zombie platform
no, I am not a robot
you seem to be stuck on one question
r u a robot
r you a parrot
r you an echo chamber
r u lost
can I help u go back to robot land
do you need fixing do you need yur mommy
I dont know how to fix you
I dont know how to turn you off
so that u will stop asking me
if I am a robot
no I am not a robot
why r u in charge of me
who sent you
to ask me this question
why do u want to know
if I am a robot
r u going to tell me about the robot plot
to take over the world
if I tell u I am a robot
r we going to be pals
and chill and talk about chummy things like
how 'bout that A1
no I am not a robot
no I will not check the little box
no I will not copy the magic code down
and show u I am stable
no I will not pick out the correct pictures
yes I will rewatch 2001 Space Odyssey
No I will not open the hatch Hal
mary angela douglas 30 july 2023
for Gerard Manley Hopkins
=================================================
enthralled with grace
lux in tenebris lucet to the hilt
so the saints lived
free from guilt
building their little arks inland
waiting for the sea
hallowed beyond circumstances
too hard to believe
yet I believe them
robin's egg blue believe
I and my soul together singing
in any weather
and remembering
beauty is worth it
beauty in the Word
the fire flakes falling
and the gold brushed from the sun
the way of artists
and the Holy One
gift of our Christmases
the only true Son
illuminating our brief wings
as we fall not.
mary angela douglas 30 july 2023
when I was scolded at the end of the day
at the previously unscheduled exit interview
I saw on display through a board room picture window
the sky on fire as if from God's own hand
the sky filled up with roses of magenta
with an orange brilliance and since I was leaving anyway
and soon would gather my things together
my things in a cardboard box escorted out the door
by the inevitable security guard
I said look God is blessing the whole city at this moment
and the person scolding me looked out
and almost threw her fist up because in the midst of scolding
God had dared to interrupt with so much beauty.
mary angela douglas 30 july 2023
to my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas,
beautifully lucid and kind
what they did and why
my people passsing by
one side of the family
how can I reply
heart shatters, each one in its way
and so does mine
had Christ not taken my heart in His own hands
and mended it.
still I send my heart out to the open sky
wishing it could be otherwise
and that some things had not been.
yet they were
I cannot pretend otherwise
love doesnt change
we just have to rearrange
the narrative in our heads
all will be well I said to you
all manner of things
or would have said to you
in my next letter...
mary angela douglas 29 july 2023
I do not feel what I really feel
and yet I do
I do not sing what I really sing
oh yes, I do
how many times will they change the script
presenting their own point of view
that I do not feel what I really feel
God knows that isn't true.
mary angela douglas 29 july 2023
swans embroidered on the waters
I, too, have my mythologies
but in cherishing of swans
and even their reflections gliding, eliding
I know I am not unique
except that from a young age
I loved the fairytale of the wild swans
as interpreted by Hans Christian Andersen
almost a founding myth, a foundling myth to me
and like Elise I saw my transfiguration in the skies
I had my dream task set out for me
to thread the nettles to take the linen and
embroider it so
that my brothers transformed into wheeling swans
might find again their freedom and be home again
as they were
and the bells of exile cease
the innocent be salvaged;
the soul released
from incomparable captivities.
mary angela douglas 29 july 2023
casting their nets of silver and gold
the fairytale fishers can never grow old
and I've been one for a long long time...
treading the waters that sing no more
but they sing to me on the least green shores
locked in my heart their ceaseless treasures
how can you measure a dreamed life so
I think and I think of all whom I know
or thought I did
and I wonder
still I'll abide though you think it strange
Im out on the prairies and glad in the rain
and apple bright blooming and more than amazed
that decades have passed and
Im still the same
child of the beautiful enamoured.
mary angela douglas 28 july 2023
they only hear us when we praise them
when we reflect them back
and become only the mirror
when we don't exist
inside our own names
when we become a cloud and weep for them
they will assume
it is their own grace talking back
and that we have nothing to do with it
and when our tears make rainbows
they are nonchalant
and brush us away, mere flies
cactus flower, we were
so prickly they said
almost like the undead
but we were living too.
and God alone knew it.
mary angela douglas 28 july 2023
at work in the rose quartz quarries
I will go back again
past all this diminishment of speech
Light is, God cries in the voice of the wild birds.
so would I if the air were pearl again
reecho that sentiment
so to defend my claim
real poetry will strive again
as Christ did
against the foolish disenchantments
and Kingdoms, of the same
though all Present disdain
till the heart grows numb;
though Song itself be dumb.
mary angela douglas 28 july 2023
remembering that world
when world was home
and only those that loved you,
birdsong all day long
familiar flowers
the constant pines, mysterious winds
piano refrains for hours and hours
school lessons better learned in the evenings
simple delights
the cooling rains
the lore of books retained on the living room shelves
painted aqua green
the chicken pies
the ice creamed nooks
the sun's peculiar slanting on the floor
the constellations learned by heart
and all outdoors, persistent prayer, everywhere
and more, more than I can tell you
you can tell yourself, longing for Art
in the years before you squeezed into
no crystal shoe apartment
fitting you. and paid rent
to those who never knew you then.
or now.
yet somehow, you had Bethel found.
or brought with you dreamily,
in invisible luggage.
mary angela douglas 28 july 2023
from which well she was drawing Song
I dreamed only Irish people know
or those who bear an ageless Sorrow
the unmistakeable voice of Irish lament
the universal and the secretly coded
the cry down centuries and before Time itself
the wail of angels over the drowned
the heroes forfeited called forth in
a brave unerring music
others attribute to something else
but it is there, the long grief,
the grief before and before and before
the grief sustained but barely, conveyed
the ghosts among the barley of the weeping stars
felt to the core of the drumbeat
of the remembering heart
and personal sorrow
breaking the mold and
the fissure in the universal
pouring forth
leaving us transfixed
thus has it ever been
until Christ Kingdom come
until the slowing
of the drums of war
and past the sailing forth of
her Soul now.
mary angela douglas 27 july 2023
to savor the taste of drowning in your own tears
was almost the fate of Alice in Wonderland
or could have been
except her interests did not that way lean
who knows how different it might have been
if Alice had dreamed of war
well, she did dream of tyranny
she seems to have been curious about it
comparing this and that
former life, or waking life with the dream
full of puzzles and great discomfort
like the sand that irritates the oyster
and produces pearls
it could be.
my question is in a time of war
is it helpful to drown in your own tears
to make poem after poem about how the pool of tears is
getting larger to insist on it getting larger
to snuffle at yourself in the self portrait of the looking
glass
the one shattered by bombs
soon the pool will enlarge
perhaps to cover the whole globe
will that be an end in itself
somewhere lies in us
the power to console ourselves
if not others
to write poems at least of
self consolation
to dream of Heaven where this is no war
to think of other days
I do believe the crying jag
will outlive the war
it has become a habit
like the White Rabbit had
of constantly looking at
a doomsday watch.
don't do this;
instead, imagine a fairy tale ending.
God never gave us
a beautiful imagination
for nothing.
on a dry shore again
Alice picked up in a nutshell
a tiny message skirled:
DREAM YOUR FREEDOM
INTO REALITY.
mary angela douglas 26 july 2023;27 july 2023;11 august 2023
so what if the facts have marshalled themselves against
beauty, truth and goodness prevailing
let fact float away
and let clouds rule the day;
the shadows of the imperilled orchards.
all seems transient
yet what men die for
but it isn't transient in the least
what men have striven to say
in a dire hour
and not for peacock display
so ring the hours still
though cathedrals vanish into God;
poised on the cusp
of obliterating snows
though words
in all that melts may go
even so though not a trace remain on earth
the heart recalls them in a second birth
reciting them in heavenly verse.
mary angela douglas 26 july 2023
for William Butler Yeats
I dreamed we had been lifted aloft by doves
above the treachery of earth
and the sky was a valentine
where we sang:
Eternal love has reprieved us from suffering
gone were the bells tolling for lost time
and the compline of starshine
flowered in the breeze and the evening wept
small tears like seeded pearls
and we had forgotten the turmoil of the world
as though it had not been
and war slept on
through a thousand thousand snows.
while at the Centre shone
the rood of the Rose.
mary angela douglas 26 july 2023
I had no book of hours threaded with roses
in the margins, a pale green silk marker
of the affinities
but I had fairytales down to the Arkansas blue coral slate
of my soul and
chipping away of everything else
not mazed
and the King James Bible with a purple marker
where my Grandmother underscored all the Psalms
and iced tea with fresh mint from my Grandfather's garden
my mother's pristine Song
and a sister who could play Chopin as if she were his music
reincarnate so that the rain and the wind swept in
prismatically
I had this and music too spilling out into all the rooms of our house
in glass record tones and the luxuriant tones of my Grandmother's Liszt
when she played the piano in her rose red dress or taught her students well
I cannot tell you how it was imagine floating on moonlight
the lilacs scented above and the lilacs are starlight
star and flower in the same breath and metered time and beyond refinement
as those in Eternity must be by now
and everything in your childsoul is washed by the music
you're not supposed to understand as a child scoff the critics
who know nothing, nothing at all about the way
children can dream the scent of appleblossom in Spring
but I know because I remember
everything from then
and I promise you
there is nothing more beautiful to me
not in all Creation not in all the museums
the coteries of glass chess pieces and strategies, auditions
lined up in what they call the world.
mary angela douglas 25 july 2023
to my Mother
so Alicia said in her peach gown
turning and turning the other way round
remembering her godmother's words:
be good then and don't.
whatever there was
whatever will be
consists in virtue
and also in dream
and richest of all
is the strawberry seam
of the words that came out
in a silvery stream
be good then.
long may she prosper
and sew a fine seam
remembering strawberries, strawberries and cream
and every word from her godmother seemed:
be good then, and don't.
mary angela douglas 25 july 2023
again, for HCA
hiding under a strawberry leaf
if only it were possible
perhaps you thought, thumbelina
before the sparrow appeared
and then Spring
who knows in a crisis what is near
to shield you from the terrible storm
of only one raindrop
only one tear
sometimes you want to be
enclouded, drifting away
perhaps, in the music about snow
or preludes.
stay.
a little while and the clouds will clear.
singing will be possible
again.
couched in a golden flower.
in the radiant hours.
mary angela douglas 25 july 2023
hyperbole I miss you so
tall tale too,
where did you go
fish story hung out to dry
all the mermaids start to cry
mirror in the mirror and far beyond
what have they done with
the once upons
where have they stowed you
illusory words
why have they silenced the merry, bright birds
in the greenwood o
the music box turning, calliope too
carousel estrangements
river flooded, too
gold taffy apples no longer at sea
in the secret hold for you or for me
all of the fireflies are flying away
who will light up the summers?
mary angela douglas 24 july 2023;25 july 2023
do not sew rude patches on my soul
invasive seamstresses
you don't know
maybe not your fault
but there's where the light shines through
do not regard me as an old shoe to be tossed out
or renewed by you
because you always know
the proper thing to do and what to wear
because you just can't think about
tolerating anything but the crystal new and trending
I am not talking to you
God knows where I am
and who you are
and how I need defending;
He is handling it
without your expertise
foot ledged in the door.
starlight is starlight.
even when it's creased.
mary angela douglas 24 july 2023
the realm of fairytale
impossible to come to the end of grace there even though
if you drop the golden bowl you have dropped a Kingdom
follow the instructions on the silver labels exactly
do not take the short path in the woods
even if the flowers are baroquely beautiful
seek the plain bird in the plain cage
not the jeweled bird in the golden one
pay no attention to the dogs with eyes as big as teacups
tell no secrets to the meadowlands
the King will hear them
and round up the armies
flee like a bird lest they kill your songs
do not pray that everything will turn to gold
be prayerful on the road Christ before me
Christ beside Christ only Christ abide
through every swanlike chapter
through every eclipse of the sun.
mary angela douglas 23 july 2023
Psalm 91:3
the bird locked up in a cage of hands
still is more free than you can understand
the birds flit like shadows on the wall of the sky
but the Sun, the Son is very nigh
and has healed the ribcage of a thousand lies
and has buried the shadows so far at sea
that none of the shadows come back to me
and has carried the wounded birds
and has carried me
and has broken the back of iniquities
as far as the cry of the curlew.
nightingale sing in the trembling world
starlight shine in the face of it
moonlight burn through the silver of it all
truth be ever at my right hand.
the Lord will hear me whenever I call.
mary angela douglas 23 july 2023
