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