ON THE EVE OF ANOTHER YEAR

 

ON THE EVE OF ANOTHER YEAR

God be with those who take too much on themselves

Who feel something is required of them

When the earth turns into a new year

That somehow they must ease its path through space

Give rest to yourselves those who care to that degree

And rest knowing

The wind can breathe without you

The trees as well

The stars

Rest now

Rest from care

From worry

From overthinking it

From the sorrows you feel

Somehow compelled to bear

Christ bore all

Christ bore all

Only be.

Like the grass lives

Like babies sleep

On their mother’s lap

Dream into Time

In all the tenses

Dream, You are

Consolation’s own.

Mary angela douglas 31 december 2023

THERE IN THE DENSE AND FAIRYTALE WOOD

there in the dense and fairy tale wood

the storybook kind where you’re all alone

and starlight shines in little pools

and violet and moss so happily coexist

with the least mist more beautiful, still;

still is starlight and quenching breeze

something is about to pop and sparkle even more

and wishes are heaped up with redolent leaves

even by the dragon’s door

the one they tamed

the ones who came before, soft is their footfall now.

perhaps they leave now the light lilting snows

for you, like ivory souvenirs while

the moon drops all her valorous gold

upon the floor of pine needles and acorns

sifting at last the gold of time passed

in an unfettered alchemy

and from this dream, its skies of rose and seafoam green

there is no one who will shake you awake

because already, you are home.

mary angela douglas 30 december 2023 

WHEN IT WASN'T LIKE THIS

under the snow of dreams cast down

beauty and truth aren't speaking to each other

even the sun makes ranting sounds

everyone kicks the hero around

virtue is mocked and tempers flare

over the smallest dullest things

the chic of despair hits ready to wear

people protest for the right to hate

Christ weeps on at the beggar's gate

angels depart on their bruised wings

anyone tone deaf sings and sings

to thundering applause

and we get into our time machines

remembering when it wasn't like this.

mary angela douglas 30 december 2023

TO BUILD THEIR KINGDOMS

"...Thine is the Kingdom..."

=The Lord's Prayer

 

To build their kingdoms

No expense was spared

The deaths of millions everywhere

The obscure sorrows of the obscure

And this we learned in school as history

Treaties signed and battles endured

And usurpations of the soul

The soul cries out to God alone

Whether from valley or from throne

And yet we slough through misery

For those who craved a legacy

And trampled those so less, unknown

For thirst of a glory all their own.

mary angela douglas 30 december 2023

WHO CAN SAY

 

Who can say

in a world where experts predict too much

they have no way of knowing

the light that emanates from a single star

could affect us for good

the breeze at night

the ferns, rustling near the river

everything is not explainable

the mysteries defend us

even while

we do not understand them

and how they reinforce us

without our knowing; preordained for us

in their hidden kingdoms.

mary angela douglas 29 december 2023

OCTOBER 7, 2023

What poem can suffice now

Seeing again early in this millennium that the world is cruel

Unexpectedly, out of the blue

Taking away what God gives

But God is not ambushed

He will return everything in kind

Reversing the sorrows endlessly

Of this we have guarantees

The guarantee of His goodness

Of His witnessing omniscience whispering

Of His seeing and wounded Eye

Whatever sorrowful surprise

History has up its bitter sleeve

He has more and honey endowed

Softer than falling snow

More adamant than stone.

His enduring Love is.

mary angela douglas 29 december 2023

All reactions:

1Mary Angela Douglas

RECURRING

 

the same dream dreams itself

and percolates along

the grooves that sorrow set

in former

melancholy winter dawns

and everything that’s vivid

disappears

into a pale wind tunnel of the years

well, maybe not

I still have some dried flowers I forgot

in vivid blue

pressed in a book of poems I did not

get from you

or someone else

and it’s living on my shelf

and it declares

that Christ came like a knight of old

and killed despair

and I believe that dragon sure he slayed

so I will make the best of this dream fogged and sterling,

new scrambled, egg faced day.

mary angela douglas 28 december 2023

 

 

DREAMS THAT TRAVEL A LONG DISTANCE YET ARE NOT ORACULAR

  

Dreams that travel a long distance yet are not oracular

I have heard some say though not in my hearing

mean that nothing special will happen today

one way or  the other

should we fall asleep at high tide

or speak in a dolphin delphinium language we have never learned

to choose which side in the battles that seem endless

but seeming may not be so

take comfort there in the borderlands of consciousness

where no battle lines are drawn

nor even indicated with dotted lines,

(strategic, dulled trajectories)

In the eternal sphere of things

almost mentioned in dreams

films flickering at the edge of peripheral seeing

with truly fairy tale endngs

where all the images converge

as if in kaleidoscopic Being

and with their attendant angels,

unnamed heralds

to dry your secret tears

mary angela douglas 28 december 2023

POETRY STRIKES WITH LIGHTNING THE TREE OF SADNESS

 

for Emily Dickinson

 

So had the cloud wept itself out of being

Rain that tipped the trees of winter’s unbloom

So had the skies emeshed with a glittery wonder

Spiraled in purple throughout the childhood room

That dreams would come, a vertigo at the Poles

A rush of words stamping like horses of gold

A sign and a seal of more than was real

a music of starlight and stone.

mary angela douglas 27 december 2023

 

 

 

 

 

WHO HAS THE WHAT O'CLOCK IN FAIRY TALES (FINAL VERSION)

 

who has the what o'clock in fairy tales?

it's rarely said;

the silver deadline looms

often by daybreak

so you pull an all nighter

as if in school

but you live in a place

where the clock without hands

appears and disappears

as if you were in a Bergman film

or the dream that preceded it

or the black rimmed clock in school

with giant numerals and the scarlet weeping

second hand stops for hours

at 3:15 pm and freezes there

a good lone while before school

is let out at 3:20

and you haven't guessed the riddle yet

or you have and later in the evening after supper

you'll realize your first answer was correct

and you shouldnt have erased it

you follow directions closely when

retrieving rubies for the dwarves,

the crones, the somethings in disguise.

and you grow wise. or remain the simpleton

the goose girl in search of her geese.

the children chime.

they want to hear the story

one more time

or you are lost in the woods

with no guardian angels wingprints On the snowclad air

though you've searched everywhere

where the tick tock of the soul

is just bewildering;

or not in sync with the time machine

you land in the countryside brimful of strawberries

but stuck inside

sorting the peas from the ashes

for the whole tribe

or refurbishing peach sashes

for the stepsisters

and spinning the straw to tearstained gold

when it all comes back to you in stunning detail

giotto's frescoes washed in vermillion and blue

after you're so footsore you can hardly stand

for any portico's view you just remember

you were in that land, and spoke all afternoon

but now you're in a contrary place

and can't figure out the human race

determine who's friend or foe

still God knows.

He hasn't forsaken you.

he let's you find

the magic stewpot

so that you won't starve

and leads you through

the picture puzzle 

with no sky

without a single reason why

through grace

through blinding grace.

mary angela douglas 29 june 2015;27 december 2023

STAR INTO STAR DIVISIBLE, CLOUD BY CLOUD/SONG FOR CHRISTMAS EVE 2023

 

Star into star divisible, cloud by cloud

Now the camellia moon floats, ever, at large

Sea into sea the wave sheer music relaunching

Carries bright measures over the darkness to me.

 

Dream by dream the sleep that was broken resolves

Into a finer epiphany, closer to Earth

Angels herald the light of a beautiful sorrow

Rose in the briars caught yet no more dearth

 

Courage wavers, my smallest candle blown out

Still I feel the myriad suns arise

Over the mockery of the ages

Losing the tune of all that was despised

 

Comfort ye comfort ye my people

Every shadow sings and each gust sighs

Christ is born each winter twig is radiant

Candlewick of the Love that cannot die.

mary angela douglas 23 december 24 decenber 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOSING THE TRAIL TO THE SUN AGAIN, I CRY

Losing the trail to the sun again, I cry

tears in the appling orchards frozen over

where have I hid from myself

the paling summers

swift are the time lapsed clouds above me

they drift in the wounded colour wheels and in their tapering off

I mourn for

earth as seen from space

no longer a wonder

factions fight and splinter the constellations 

we were not born for all this consternation

beyond my sight, the tree lines’ demarcations

shade into darkening green and then are gone.

how have we become such a desultory nation

where have we left our souls and why so wan

have the captains abandoned their given stations.

eating the last of the feast I wonder why

God in his nearness cannot get from us

a single valid reason why

we think we made the world ourselves;

when the evidence pales

and evening falls

I will say my prayers, keel haul  these shadows from the walls

Believe in spring again, springtide, after all deny

this uttermost drought of dreams feigned normalcy

and stutter the high winds into beauty reclaimed.

mary angela douglas 18 december 2023

THE RHYMES REMEMBERED AT LEAST SUBLIMINALLY SHINING SOMEWHERE

As if just another thief on the King’s highway

so Time trips us up in its not so rubied slippers

showing us no way home from blue ribboned fairs

though that is neither here nor there

chime the fair maidens, chorus

the Graces in my maypole ribbon streaming

sing song slightly altering dream

beware

the gilded apple, take the plain one

bread and cheese (again!) and the tartest cherries

for the pies I cannot bake

or three Queens each

with a different fate in a ballad I pray not to live

still for God’s sake I will keep the earliest signs

the crossroads of the lemons, limes

the bells of rhymney, clementine

the refreshing, difficult days with soda pops

turned sublime,the last of the strawberries

in just in time, old nursery rhymes;

like the sun there, come out of the clouds forever.

mary angela douglas 14 december 2023

THE BOX (FINAL VERSION)

 

In a small box have I hid my heart

as in a half remembered fable.

what kind of box I think I imagine, I dream

curious myself about the curious myself

is it a silver box, a wooden box painted over

or carved in incredible filagree with trees

beside a stream that is forever still, made of blue tiles

is it gilded over at least when the sun peeps through

the venetian blinds to the top of the dresser where perhaps It lies

with a lid of, vaguely, mother of pearl or is it

the most rustic thing in the world

a thing well disguised for holding a heart

that no one might filch it when I am in dreams asleep

and slightly away from the me on earth out traveling oh may it be

a plain box like the plain nightingale that sings

the glory of God though with drab wings

that none may steal its song out of the skies

that freedom of choosing the right thing for the right reason

should always stay in a secret season

how can I describe it

better to leave it locked

where only God can see

the clouds, the light that rove;

the small furled and greening sea

that rises:

in me. And wants to make poetry

to shine imperceptibly through, almost translucently

the yellow green leaves of the trees of that Far Country

we have heard of, though not recently.

mary angela douglas 14 december 2023

WHENEVER I PRAY FOR ISRAEL I FEEL

Whenever I pray for Israel I feel

The rushing of angels wings,

I feel the armies of the Lord draw nigh

I do not know policy I only know

When lightning lights the sky

It is a spoken word

A word that needs no defense

I know that the arm of the Lord is swift

That there is sorrow in battle

That there are battles beyond policies

Beyond the political entities entirely

That we are in a living tableau vivant

Now, this moment

The dust and the ash of sorrow is raining down

The borders of the heart have been dealt a blow

And we do not know do not know do not know

How to sustain those in flight but pray for light

For the resettlement of every heart on earth

Here in another turning of the wheel of time

Of history out of sight, the one that matters most

The wings the wings of the Holy Ghost

The sacrament of peace that is not false

At the end.

May valor of all her children be blessed.

Her shores be made of honey

Our souls in prayer all night

Our souls in prayer all night

mary angela douglas 13 december 2023

SHOULD THIS POEM LIVE

 

should this poem live? 

I wished that I could carve in stone

rare words that would shine beyond the time allotted me

not that I knew ought of carving

but something should last that once was me

not crumble so easily into the sea, neglect, a something

neither heard nor seen with few witnesses and then, oh none.

if I could have I would have wept words away

and left off carving anyway, I was not schooled in tools

and highest beauty in the smallest flower dies there is 

not one that will not bend its stalk and cease to be

an image in a reflecting stream no more though gloriously it lives today.

but from the question I could not turn away

something there still was left to say

should the sound of my voice to myself even fade

surely what had the imprint of my heart cannot fade away

carved or not, relegated to some cobwebbed shelf

or not in print at all beyond my scrawl on paper

on a summer's day

hardly a breath in between one note and another and yet

though I felt my soul was a meadow mist, even more obscure

what I wrote or meant to write from feelings fountaining and pure

was a thing a wrought thing that could not be unwrought

even as a fleeting thought

as a gesture of a hidden love it came to say something

however imperfect so that God could lift it into the Heavens, 

a small cloud singing on..

and full of little birds

mary angela douglas 12 december 2023

WHO KEEPS GUARDING THE KING'S GOLDEN PEAR TREES

 

Who keeps guarding the king’s golden pear trees

filched by moonlight is falling asleep on the job

their slippers danced to threadbare pieces

nor stitched up by the applesauce sun

and missing another folkloric deadline

am I, am I the only one

in a spindly secret silver language

making the hemstitch work

that lengthens the shadows in the orchard

or is that too fine a point to make

in the fairytale coming apart at the seams

the diamond swans on the diamond lake

they will forsake

Christ will redeem

all of us lost on the fairy tale way

and not waylaid, but saved

and Light light up the skies that were so dim.

in the snow codes I have learned to live

in candlelit Christmas semaphores

in metaphors for the Rose of Jesse’s sake

revivified, let the census

of evergreen joys begin

mary angela douglas 11 december 2023

 

THE MAP IS A MIST;YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT (FINAL VERSION)

 

the map is a mist; you have to know that first

frail as parasol paper could be

in a flood.

she raised flowers in the mud for a while

and was happy; 

at home with paper lanterns;

peach iced tea.

are there fractures in these ash of gold skies?

I used to wonder

walking in November,

the lakeshore like a toy.

the map is a mist and cannot resist

the old names.

I cannot find them there

with my torn out page

from the directory of roses.

it's so multifoliate,

the Rose, the way she thought of it

then

no composer could compose it.

and I have only the mists to go by.

the shoreline indefinable

snow on snow, blizzards of music

rift of my dreaming mind

what was I hoping, singing to find

inscrutable as lost time.

mary angela douglas 19 december 2015;10 december 2023

THEN THERE IS NO MORE SCHOOL (REPOSTED)

[on the passing of time]

one day in the rain you turned into watercolours

too bad, no one there to record it.

what lovely puddles

the small child said

splashing through your ghost

or watching your rainbows

trickle down the drains

too young to ask oh

what remains.

I scorched so many things while ironing

out the wrinkles.

remembering the heat that rises

from the radiators too,

midwinters, when being inside alone

is a Christmas in itself

when you are warm

and how this comforts you

pressing your nose against the

frosted glass and

how old wax on the floors

turns yellow as fried eggs

until the pink of sunrise

filters through in even colder dawns:

the bus honks twice then

there is no more school.

mary angela douglas 28 may 2015

THERE'S NO CONVERSATION LIKE THE ONE YOU COULD POSSIBLY HAVE (FINAL VERSION)

there's no conversation like the one you could possibly

have by yourself fabricating the fabric of it

so that every inch shines on the loom

and you weave in and out of it your own design

without designs on anyone else without the

glaring meeting your Good Morning!

on those mornings where the sullen canyons

won't even give you an echo back.

so here's the track we run on when it

all looks bleak, our own! and every part

of that railroad gleams and goes past

limpid streams that turn the waterwheels

round and the children in their colorful

outfits wave in the snow near the

evergreens lit for perpetual Christmas.

this is the secret of playwrights cherishing

their plays or the old men cracking wise with

invisible friends inside the fast food restaurants

or the angels in a dark time,

ages long hunting blind

heralding pearl to pearl edged wings

alone not yet in flight

no shepherds yet in view.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2015;9 december 2023

WERE WE PAINTING ON CLOUDS WHILE WE LIVED ON EARTH (REPOSTED)

"were we painting on clouds while we lived on earth..."

I heard them sigh, "did all that drift away?"

in the eternal breezes down the

esplanades of Heaven

shimmering almost sad

where the gold leaf trees

never lose their leaves.

are there no more autumns then?

asked the child in me, in Paradise?

ah it will seem to you then as now

perhaps their better angels said in sweet surmise,

you wrought it all in vain

that the dark rains came, the darker floods

and carried it all away.

and yet, it is not so.

mary angela douglas 28 may 2015

APRES LE DELUGE AND THE WOUNDING DECREE (FINAL VERSION)

 

the kings roses are in bloom

whose else could bloom

in winter snows and cast

a pink tinge on everything

even my old gown she sighed when

waltzing round the edges

of the parchment multifoliate

the painted flowers cannot detract

from the decree

of wounding me.

I hide in the shade of smiles

I can't remember when

all this happened

still. and roses fade

but not the brier

roses fade and not the brier

she sang on one note only

till the last string broke.

and word of this floated

out of the Kingdom.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2015;9 december 2023

THE SNOW QUEEN AND OTHER REGIMES

this is how melting started in the annals

of the world the unsmiling instructor

began...

but this is not the beginning she thought

inside her head where no one could hear

her yet

the child quite small at her desk

on wide ruled paper began to write

not what the teacher said but

the history of melting, in colours

of the flowers that appeared

in dream spectrums the snow itself

a spectrum of violets of orchids

of camellia alphabets no longer cryptic

and how it feels not to freeze anymore

to be free of mathematics falsely applied

to face those that lied to you with

a flower crowned head

and to be regally happy

no longer standing in corners

punished for enchantment,

for buttering bread on the wrong side and-

when you come down to it:

for withstanding even from a young age

the soul plucked out by the roots

for today's lesson on botany.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2015

THE MAP IN ICE CREAM COLOURS (REPOSTED)

how fervently we wished

that the map in ice cream colours

had been the real map

of the World.

the one marked for Treasure.

and Treasure would be found

and then we would sit down

on the checkered cloth for a picnic.

huge cookies, all around

with molten chocolate in the sun

when wishes were young.

and the ice cream map melting

and we are laughing

by infinite streams

in the tall grasslands

and the grass, leaning upwards

into the stars

mary angela douglas 15 april 2015

THE LOOP DE LOOP OF THE STORY AS IT FLIES

 

by this time in the story

the fog will have lost its way

you knew that could happen one day

it’s the finest mystery

why sometimes things look bad and yet

never come to be

you’re stationed on an isle

where all you can do is smile

and you make flower leis

out of anything the way

children make up stories

where the good holds sway

don’t tell me there is no glory

I heard it in a story too

mary angela douglas 5 december 2023

MUTE SWANS CANNOT CRY ALOUD

mute swans cannot cry aloud

I whisper to myself in dreams

how infinitely sad it seems to me

until I consider that silence may be

on occasion, 

more beautiful than likewise, the lilies

speak through gliding

through lifting your wings

in a silver, silver sheen fathomless

let flight speak for you

or floating, this will do as much

or not at all

would some understand you anyway

float on uncomprehended

upon the waters visionary

expressing the soul

far from trouble

in what music there is 

in being itself, without language

untrifled with

commissioned by angels and emblematic of (to me) 

what I cannot get into my poem

no matter how much I long to.

mary angela douglas 4 december 2023

P.S. Strangely, I found out after writing this poem that mute swans are not actually mute. they are, according to Wikipedia much less vocal than other species of swans though they are still called mute.

But my poem is not about natural history, my poem is about the swan as an emblem of beauty in poetry for centuries and in the poetic world if something is called a muted swan, it is, in fact muted. It is also a fact that the swan in this sort of image, and symbolism whatever habits its counterpart has in biological nomenclature, the swan as symbol truly has been muted in so called postmodern poetry.

as have as much as possible, I believe any poet now referring earnestly to the swan as symbol, unless and until it can be made into some kind of political imagery.

CHRISTMAS 2023

=================================

these earthly disruptions cannot bide

this nova nuova Christmastide

the angels gliding in

on meteoric song

how I would the sound prolong

turning from minor to major keys

snowing and evergreen mind at ease

all in the northern skies

all in the northern skies I dreamed

processions of angels

of winter’s constellations won

of snow bright, candlelight in excelsis Deo adorations

especially caroled by little ones

Christ is to the manger come;

the rose of winter, the tripped radiances

the merry kingdom claimed.

despite of all disdain.

so buon natale, each refrain.

Christ is born!

the torn heart mended

the darkness rended

mary angela douglas 4 december 2023