start anywhere
painting a blue sky bluer
don’t defend despair
or trust in the new things
because they’re newer
you knew it long ago
there is a river
where beauty flows
you can dream you’re always there
painting a blue sky truer
learning on cloud sheer days
how not to strive with the Lord
who’s keeping you alive.
mary angela douglas 30 october 2023
ROSE PINK FLAMINGO FLURRIES OVER AFRICA
[on Nikolai Gumilev, a brief cadenza-]
Rose pink flamingo flurries over Africa
he might have seen, if he had lived
a son grown taller, deeper, not displaced-
still not following Anna anyway perhaps
at times repeating what he said before
oh, you should take up the ballet
returning later to find fresh fairytale scraps
bound up in no ribbons, scattered on the floor
and changeling, the tawny glints in cloisonne
jeweled combs that weren't there before o
trist bisque doll with the books all sold
and very little left; in a ragged shawl she might
have been, still adorned with red roses fading into
old silk but
she's no longer home, the one he left in worn down
slippers floated a queen slightly foreign to him
a girl who wept flowers and stars
at the least provocation.
singing.
Africa, he sighed and was off again.
how would her verse have altered-
if he had lived- with so much absence,
so much more, filling up with snows
and Mandelstam, the same-
still haunted, haunting the pavements where
they used to roam watching the Neva in the cold
fill up with raspberry lights, little clouds and poems
commemorating in advance
the later lamentations
unaccountable joy
mary angela douglas 26 January 2014
who stands guard at the paper castle
made of paper himself.
who do you love the most
I whispered to him, at his post.
“God and infinity”,
he seemed to say to me
mustering the stars;
“Dream Things, not as they are”.
this you can really defend
I whispered to him again.
mary angela douglas 26 october 2023
for the silver wound of a child's teardrop
mirroring the sky
let clouds form
bandaging the Sun
let warring kingdoms be as one
and if our expectations wane
dear God please prop them up again
because with hope we have to live
in order to begin again
past a thousand ruined springs
emerge at last once more
to sing.
mary angela douglas 24 october 2023
swans in the mirror of the soul
float on, having been banned from
post modern poetry.
where else would they go?
constricted and confined
condensed at the ballet to
save the audience time;
devoid of meaning
no longer needed at school
slipping through the slit
of the Valentine box
wrapped in silver foil
decorated with red construction paper hearts
on white lace paper doilies, no more.
configured differently-
oh! not at all.
for they shone brilliantly
beyond the dress-circle diamonds of the
spectators who cannot guess now
when the clues are far too few
what they are missing.
over the footlights
swans in the mirror of the soul
the ballet blanc adrift
drift on a wisp of
Pavlova remembered, perhaps the
waters of Coole;
half-murmured in a dream
emblems no longer transformed,
transforming
your former poets mourn
and supplicate but you must be
dreaming
they say to you the postmoderns
who still write this way
and mock the reemergence
ot the lines that float that way
as if this were a kind of joke
and they'll hold out to you
the fruitless tree the ragged branch instead
the world pruned back and judge the
unseen, too rich and variegated the
thread of what has been
snapped like a violin string
no cream for the apple tart.
other ages darker than this
you think but cannot say
were less remiss
have known have known the
soft flutter of few stars,
alone above the trees and witnessed, then, that
the swans in the mirror of the soul
float on and exquisite as pearl by pearl
impervious to wars, cultural or otherwise-
to poets unlearning their trade
wild Beauty wild with grief
beyond your censure
unraveling and undeterred.
mary angela douglas 19 december 2013;22 november 2014;28 december 2014;23 october 2023
Orange blossoming, blossoming blossoming
Honey on the spoon stuck fast amber in the moon
At last, Heavenly on toast ambrosia ghost
Orange peal peeling out caught in a cake
It’s all about the citrus citrus citrus
Marmalade branching breakfast table
Under the trees and harlequinease
The dolls at their best in
The honey of the day, the orange blossoming stays
Too beautiful as we retell it
Tree never felled unless we fell it
Oh in the groves of dream.
mary angela douglas 22 october 2023
This is in praise of the immortal poets
Who wrote about flowers who wrote about flowers
The way I would like to needlepoint if I could
As Im sure my great grandmother did, pansies, white
Violets, little remembrances with no stitch dropped
But I am no needlewoman.
Let me gather them up all the English wildflowers
The American ones. Thank you Lord Tennyson for the
Flower in the crannied wall reminding me to be of good cheer
And grow even in the crevices brightly and Blake holding the flower
In his palm like infinity, Emerson with his Rhodora, and Blake again
With his sunflower, all of you I praise and I think of the kindness you
Showed to such humble subjects as those and you embroidered also
the fringed gentian, William Cullen, the wild honeysuckle, Phillip Freneau and I remember the music of
MacDowell too
to a wild rose
The simple melody how it flowed over me hearing it played on the piano
By gifted students of music in my Grandmother’s piano studio
And I wish to be sung to like a child again by the flower poems to be among them
That way, their cheering colors and fragrances lifted up in the words of great men
Who were not ashamed of beauty even of a fairy like brevity
Keats most of all with his musk roses
Who bent down and praised as Shakespeare did rosemary, forget me nots
the crown That Ophelia wore when dreaming became too much transported by grief and love
In the glassy stream to our rue.
mary angela douglas 22 october 2023
it wasn't the doll like certainty of the bride, the bride doll
I sought from You, Lord.
but only to know the Father of the
Light inside and glide through tempests.
it wasn't a doll like certainty veiled,
feted adorned with life-like flowers
for which I cried.
why would I when
You have given all the stars
without being asked.
and your flowering floats snowlike
from winter skies
and each springtide
petaled numberless and fragrant
beyond the heart's capacity
to abide..such beauty is.
it isn't the doll-like shine I missed
orange blossomed extravaganzas and
the mythical weddings guests
how could I when.
only one gleam of your
Christmas
sustained me-
one sparkle that sent-
the Magi on their way
mary angela douglas 6 december 2013; 21 october 2023
abandon the ruins my heart cried out
whenever I lingered there
and when I stirred the ashes
it was more than I could bear
yet something smote my conscience
and struck my soul with awe
when I saw the lemon forsythia
her soft gold there install
mary angela douglas 20 october 2023
for my mother
her wishes were all strawberry, flecked in golden cream
that never soured in summer; such a dream
of raspberry ice in the dead of winter making you
happy to be cold or colder then or
a pale green slice of lime in sparkling cranberry nectar,
that is quenching but you can't guess why
her wishes were a blue sonata in a bluer
town, true as larkspur lilted the lilies, as
pink as mignonette at sunset
sunrise never far from here
is a stillness gathered in a white bouquet
of all white fragrances you can't imagine
simply, said the good fairy,
such a sweetness concentrated.
will you try? this pale perfume
of white rose, of narcissus.
I, too was enchanted by her wishing.
entranced, I only stood there-
moon coloured, shy and wondering-
incapable of granting anything at all...
mary angela douglas 10 december 2013;revised 11 december 2013;20 october 2023
lost saints wandered through forests of miracle
treading the light but never crushing it;
famished, making the music shine:
alone.
how are you far from home
when you carry Him with you
lost saints wondering wondered
and they did not err.
and they are shot with gold
in all the illuminations
and they are jewel like in their speaking
without recriminations
if they should speak:
visionary, acute in wind and wave
ah but how will they save
how will small animals defend themselves
when they are gone
when the bluebird blue no longer
hangs onto
the hidden flowers,
before the approaching heel and
with none to gather them.
mary angela douglas 11 december 2013;20 october 2023
could it be made of small stars
she asked the Fashioner softly
so that nothing could catch fire
in the vicinities
or carved from ivoried snows
to be worn in extreme cold, quarried
from a warmer rose, rosepetal stictched to
an even seam
even seeming like spring
at the earliest, set off
by pale green velvets,
the mazy motion of the trees.
I am setting off she prayed
on a journey that has no end.
make it from light, my Father
or wrists of rainbows
bracelets of the miraculous
spanning the unshed tears,
the underpasses
overlooking the crevasse
over which I must pass
heart-rended, even without shoes
slipping on the pearl of Your shadow...
moon painted, bright beyond wonder
so that I may not forget You
mary angela douglas 24 december 2013/20 october 2023
start with a star
a little brighter than usual
flashing a lighthouse message
above scant trees.
is it that hard
to imagine?
you could be going somewhere else
than the errand you thought you'd choose
or was chosen for you:
a magi's journey through purple darkness
beyond the Christmas card silhouettes
silk-screened across the indigo;
glitter on parchment representing snow
or starlight, take your pick.
and then a cold night.
you're in the fields or just at work;
not thinking of anything at the bus stop
and the light grows larger now
filling half the sky
and work grows dim.
start with a song.
you think you might have heard before
only, not like this, and not for Him
as if the notes had burst all bonds
and turned to gold around and through
your listening attuned to nothing else.
start with a feeling, almost a little jeweled
washed silver to gold and back again
tree resin is singing too now
through all the winter trees
of gilded apples on the branches of the universe
you only thought you knew.
and life starting over with the Star.
mary angela douglas 25 december 2013;20 october 2023
after Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, "The Wild Swans"
"go out into the world!" she cried she cried
tipping their wings with frost
in the early spring,
the false queen.
the children turned to birds, obeyed.
and lifted heavy wings.
interminable is their flight, oh God-
and the sun forever going down
swiftly into a sea made out of violets.
guard their meadows.
they are out of sight.
oh mother bereft of song
how long you waited by the picture
window of a twilight
for their least fluttering down.
mary angela douglas 31 december 2013;rev. 21 november 2014'19 october 2023
(a serenata for Wallace Stevens)
the postcard from the Alhambra never sent
is tinged with rose regrets, perhaps,
a settled aspect to the tinted aqua skies,
the candied rosebud sighs of the Infanta
in fantastic array who wants to play
in the courtyards with the
rose-red day and not
to have her portrait made.
she is just whatever we can say about her anyway:
a mere shading of the perfumed fountains
by whoever feels that way and owns the power
to decree: Segovia never loved su guitarra endlessly-
let the universe weep little stars for the lies
that are told dismantling every siglo de oro,
verilly chided the Princesa
who never could grow old
in that shade of violet.
in a dream I treasured the
distance between sun and sun
and found the yardstick wanting
in translations
per metric dreams within dreams,
the rose fringed skies inadequately portrayed,
the whole of Toledo under indigo clouds.
mary angela douglas 16 november 2013;19 october 2023
(to William Butler Yeats wherein I imagine the poet's last
Christmas)
the sands run down your ruby-throated hour glass
and up and down the scales of words that
can't sit still, you sing:
the dulcet chords still stringed; prolonged,
the glass bells chiming in the Christmas air
though for not much longer
will the angels gather, as they did long ago
above the children, anxious to go home
and break the silver envelope of pain
surrounding the outer atmospheres again
and smash the harps of stone
and pluck the silver from the moon.
bright poets, the brightest in the room
how empty, empty is the loom
how we've forgotten all that sings,
that sang oh, all that about the human
child exiting human mischance
in a fleeting dance and through
a faerie entreaty and it seeming plausible.
suddenly, in a tower's room
you'd start to hum a tune you
thought you never knew before
with the cabinet crystal shining.
conspirational. and more,
the violet figure at the door
of Radiance returned.
mary angela douglas 21 november 2013; 13 january 2016; 19
october 2023
(after the school auditions for the Nutcracker Ballet)
here is the snow-globe where the tiny fir cones
gleam in a sugared quiet lit
by pastel, multicoloured stars o in tiny spotlit rose,
or amethyst fire, of carillon sighs through
a winter self-contained,
if miniscule.
and it will never sleet inside your heart here
if you're not in the ballet.
you will only be surprised each time
a tinny music chirps and clicks
whenever you are shaken,
and the universe is
flecked as if for a tiny party
all your own and the
self-same fairy confetti cotillion
drifts and sifts;
it sparkles, trembles, curved like a new moon
on a wire and you twirl, my glaced
sugurplum, you dream
you are the queen of cherry,
drizzled whipped cream;
tiaraed sovereign of the ballerinas
who incarnate snows,
their lavender shadows
and the pink the blue-
will bloom
in this Christmas buona sera
even if no one calls you, 'Clara'.
mary angela douglas 21 november 2013; 19 october 2023
Sometimes I see a glittering in the air
I know that it‘s angels
It does not seem to me at all unusual
that they should be there
and in that way
filtering the sunlight through trees
But sometimes
it seems to me
they disappear
and are off somewhere
in a far distance
where there is beautiful music
we haven't begun to hear yet
on earth.
mary angela douglas 18 october 2023
in the necklace of the cloisonne rose
a few blue stars appeared
like sudden sapphires
so diminutive was their appearance
no one took note of this phenomenon
which scarcely could be seen
in any light
even at the most glittering parties
pack time away
all you who favor only what is writ large
for on this
as it slipped into the grass
with a faulty finely golden clasp
hinged a world.
mary angela douglas 18 october 2023
circumspect in velvet in the train of her long thoughts
no one imagined, perhaps a princess
lady of the hours of the miniatures of flowers
she kept turning page by page in a honied
light, if not, forever, and the moon
over her right shoulder.
it's hidden in the seams of no castle left on earth
the way she dreamed in astronomical conjectures.
really you may say, in all that quaintness?
but I say how can we know her thoughts
who only see her now in dim portraits
with a lilied smile, in moss velvet with
mysterious sleeves;
we who consult the historians
who only remember the wars.
mary angela douglas 27 november 2013;;18 october 2023
Why shouldn’t they be what they dream themselves into
I think to myself in dreams that are kind of lucid
If they wish to be fish on the last day of the world
With pomegranate lips lisping in a divine language
This is what you should wish for
magic fish
Wishing is not too late
Or perhaps there is someone drowning
Who could use another person’s ability to
Breathe underwater
Suddenly to wish if only I were coral
And to become so
Blending into the reefs
No fusillade can reach.
Or shatter.
mary angela douglas 18 october 2023
October and it’s the last thing I can say
like a crimson gold green leaf about to stray
from the last twig before December’s winds
oh earth stop turning for awhile
so I can understand
how much of a firewall I must build
inside my mind to endure
your miseries even from this seeming distance
take hostages of the
wind
the wind can deal with it
and remain free so easily
the stars as well take hostage
men should not hostages be
far less their children
their children's children
mary angela douglas 17 october 2023
not what you think you hear
but what you know you do
from the Lord God
in quiet midnights
or before dawn long before
dawn comes
or the striking of clocks from memory
what is whispered
from the long rays of stars
beyond history and the concentrated drip of honey
from the moon on the other side of the building
where you never can see it
from the clouds that disappear into
mystical darkness
that holds still
despite the world’s news
a silence that reassures
a faith that lingers
even about your low ceiling
a kind of heaven
though it’s not painted like the Sistine.
a keenness in the chill that penetrates
the cracks in the window frame
and sings.
mary angela douglas 17 october 2023
eating the sandstorm and the overripe tangerines
I sent my poems out to the oasis
they came back to me covered in red dust
we must not publish these a small note
read
for reasons known only to us
which we will never discuss
another dry well the birds and I sang together.
and then the bright fountains appeared.
mary angela douglas 16 october 2023
NO ONE SHALL CALL BY NAME THE INNUMERABLE SWANS
for William Butler Yeats, unsurpassed
and for the late Irish Belgian poet, Martin Burke, my
friend.
no one shall dare to sing again about the milky stars
to measure time and history by the gravitas of the Rose
to find the still music in the overshadowing woods
by heart, composed.
or beauty keening desolate in the margin of dream,
along the white roads.
requiescat, then.
no one shall call them by name, the innumerable swans
or command the peacock tinted skies
to whorl, to whirl through poetry devised
for all that dies and cannot find its way
changeling, through the anguish of the living day
when what is noble dims to merely enterprise.
strike the harp they will not dare again
to call back those doom fretted men
of the Easter Rising
tuned to the fatal hour and impervious-
babble of power as they will.
nor shall they compel the winds to rise
from Thoor Ballylee
the mythic sails to fill
no celtic twilight, seconding the first
to bud forth into reechoing infinity;
because the first remains.
nor through driving rains
summers in Byzantium
to shine again
confounding music in the end
nor words to strive
against the churlish, the cherishless tides.
mary angela douglas August 1-3. 2023
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