THE LAST WORD OF THE POEM
The poem of alpha and omega
We exist in
Each of us a world
A dream whirring in the
Eden of God
Waiting to be awakened
What shall we write about the end
Or say when there is no end
I answer softly
Speaking one last time perhaps
To the nocturnal winds
I have loved you so long
All you starry nights
How will I ever say good night to you
And mean farewell
There is no farewell
There is only Love.
mary angela douglas 30 april 2024
THROUGH EVERY GREEN LEAF’S RAPTURE
Through every green leaf’s rapture
On every April tree
How can it be
You are sending us so intensively
Waves and waves of happiness
O Lord God
Let me not be blind to see
Or deaf to hear
The surging of the flower fed winds
As they gather speed
And feel rise in me
As in girlhood, childhood
The mysterious feeling of the freedom within
We can breathe
And find in every breath your presence
We can dream
And find we are awake
To exorbitant birdsong
To unseen currents of angels
And the massing clouds.
mary angela douglas 30 april 2024
THE PARROT IN THE MOVIE DOESN’T LOOK THE SAME
So many times it happens as Im reading
That the parrot on the pirate’s shoulder
In any seaworthy tale is always the same shade
Of green
Maybe even the same parrot
And I wonder how this parrot keeps living past
The age you would expect it to
In my imagination
Sometimes the parrot bites the pirate’s fingers
I think to myself why he Is always in such a bad mood
Well really, the pair of them
Oh now there is a mutiny on board
And the parrot gleams on deck
The pirate thrashing about in the water
The parrot once again bright eyed
Not a reliable narrator
But a reliable image.
So consistently a guacamole shade.
mary angela douglas 29 april 2024
PARTICOLOURED CLOUDS HAVE GATHERED
Particoloured clouds have gathered
over the dubious monuments of earth
we memorize the clouds
the shifting of the light
like Monet, in his gardens. or
Agonized before the white cathedral.
who could freeze in stone
beyond Michelangelo
tragic glory, Mary holding Christ
in such a realm of light and shadow
I dream of the pietas
Where the orchid clouds have gathered
Dark purple the thought of human tears
Memorialized in former years
And light is scattered
So that prisms take root
Within us
And the ark sails on.
mary angela douglas 29 april 2024
FAERY DANCE, AFTER SHAKESPEARE
With light footsteps upon no stair
I sense the ghosts of no despair
Moonlit, happy, Titania’s train
Transparent, merry, not quite tame
With pale footfall upon no ground
Rippling music fairy found
They country dance the apriled night
In violet circles of delight.
mary angela douglas 29 april 2024
THE BLUE PORCELAIN OF THE SKIES
Wrought iron cannot sway me
Elaborate gates
Rose curtains at the windows
The moon, early or late
I want to live in the enchanted woods
Shaded by heavy green branches
Their greener shadows
To live by a stream that never floods
To eat berries and honeysuckle flowers
To think there of God for hours
To watch the emigrating clouds
The blue porcelain of the skies.
mary angela douglas 28 april 2024
AS THE EMPEROR LAY DYING
They threw their darkling shadows
Over the Renaissance, Shakespeare
The white roses in the fairy tale
That wept snow as the Emperor lay dying
The voices in the wind
I had come to know in childhood, asking
Oh why do the blue waters mourn.
Why does the light suffer so
I asked my angels
And yet
My room is full of sunbursts
And a stained glass radiance
Bursts in to say
It seems this way that your rose kaleidoscope
they have shattered
But there can be no eclipse of beauty
Only the vague murmuring against it
With maytime shining all around us anyway.
mary angela douglas 28 april 2024
TOY THEATRE IN FALLING RAIN
Here are the cardboard cutout figures
That I remember in a dream full of rain
Slightly transfigured the toy theatre stage
Does not grow damp in the backyard grass
Of childhood
Rococo angels draw the drapes
And each stage set is full of grace
With watercoloured castles in the blue distance
Or interior scenes, ballroom or sweet dream chamber
Where the princess falls asleep almost forever.
And balconies engraved
With our grade school nicknames.
Each fairytale play with its own set of characters
And backdrops and hilariously in fragile pantomimes
Sometimes we combined the characters from different tales
Making up our confusing and off the rail stories.
Nothing ever topped this for Christmas.
Among the toy possibilities.
We cherished it so. Ballet dramas
And let’s begin with gauzy costumes
Applause without End;
I dream of the plays resumed.
mary angela douglas 27 april 2024
FLAP AWAY UNLOVELY BUZZARD
Flap away unlovely buzzard
Gather better music if you may
You will not snatch rich cherries from the boughs
Of the living day
So shall the larks still sing
Though postmodernists tell them to shut up
Adopt a cynical air you shall not
Pecking at my wondering, wandering here..
Wonder shall remain
As Christ, declaimed
And resurrect the dying day
So that you will have no feast,
Collect the toll we had to pay
Because everything everything
Will remain so alive.
mary angela douglas 27 april 2024
RUST NOT MARINERS ON THE TEMPESTUOUS SEAS
For the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
I deny the corrosion of hours
Destined to hold within them golden bells
Knowing the world we think we inhabit
Is fugitive under
a surface spell
Light peals out from angelic sources
Clouds move at the lapsed speed of dreams
Within the worlds on worlds I believe
Fire kindles and brindles
The inner creeds.
mary angela douglas 27 april 2024
AS ON THE SILENT NIGHT, THE HOLY NIGHT
I entered the poem as if it were a moonlit wood
And saw the clouds weep drifts of snow
Why are you weeping I asked the clouds
But they didn’t know
Tears for mysterious reasons
Sometimes flow
For the jeweled stars that in their courses go
As they have gone before;
For the history of light in all its chiming;
A sharp intake of breath
The scent of winter’s trees invigorates
The soul the soul wanting to be evergreen;
hallowed moonlight settles down on me
As warm as fleece
An unseen comfort is all around
As on the silent night, the holy night.
mary angela douglas 27 april 2024
ALICE FELL OFF THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Alice fell off the edge of the world
Tea cup swirled
Still herself
But off the shelf
Into the world within the world
Who would believe her
When she returned
It’s just a dream
Or so it seemed
How glad she was
To be back again
There on the riverbank
Where it began
Still in the afternoon
Just herself
Despite all the strangeness
That she was dealt
Sometimes a journey is far too far
You have to come back
To know who you are.
mary angela douglas 28 april 2024
CASTLES
I learned about inner castles
First from St. Teresa of Avila
Then, Vladimir Bukovsky
Kafka, shortly after, his castle most dubious.
But farther back in childhood
I remember the first castle of
Disneyland I think, the Sleeping Beauty Castle
Its pink and blue, its turrets rising freshly in Anaheim
Where orange groves had been when Walt was still alive
And in his hey day
And I thought somehow
If we could go there and
I could pass through those rosy gates
They would confer on me
The true title of Princess.
Alas this was not to be
And I wept almost inconsolably
I’ll never be a princess now! At six years old.
We had Disney records, went to the earliest
Disney films the fairytales especially
Beautifully animated on Saturday matinees
Had sheet music too
And sang as well about Alice
In the golden afternoon.
I wept so hard I don’t have any tears left
For that missed opportunity
Looking back Im sorry I grieved my grandparents so
They made up for it in so many ways
We saw the World’s Fair in 1964
We had bubble lights and a color wheel
for our aluminum Christmas tree
I got to put either angel or Star atop
It was my choice
I should have understood
My one true joy
Living with them and my sister
My mother there on visits
My father’s house on Sundays
Our little dog too making things merry
Whenever the doorbell rang
The best castles of all
I was already welcome in.
Anyone can wear a tiara.
mary angela douglas 25 april 2024
BLUE CELLOS
Blue cellos in the rain
I imagine a long lost painting of Chagall
And imagine blue cellos
A light rain
It is a summer evening
The crickets refrain draws a heart through the mists
You can hear them from the rooftops
And Bella and he are flying
As if it’s the most natural thing
Above the blue music
When the rain comes down
Suddenly turned to flowers
And a pink parasol.
the moon popping up, a bouquet of orange blossoms.
mary angela douglas 25 april 2024;18 may 2024
TRAIN
Freight train
On the plain
Puffing against the big skies
You are gone
This railroad song
Im singing still for you
Banjo strung
Church bells rung
Almost gone
Old railroad song
mountain pass
tunnel through
toy trains Im
in love with you
all the figures along the track
children waving
oh come back
tiny shrubs and old downtowns
brick by brick you whistle round
keeping us still looking back
yellow freight train on your track
clothes out on the laundry lines
flapping in the breeze of time
farmers plowing in the fields
and ghost towns, losing their appeal
oh railroad sounds
from long ago
why is it that you haunt me so
mary angela douglas 24 april 2024
FOR ANTOINE SAINT EXUPERY FOREVER
The visionary aviator author of such books as The Little Prince, Wind Sand and Stars, Correspondence in a Time of War and etc.
==============================================
How would you care for your one rose
With her defensive thorn if you disappeared
Water her from the heavens
With your tears
Where you seem to have escaped
Although they found your wreckage finally
Or thought they did
Of course, this explained nothing
How appropriate for you to vanish
Like a figment of the French imagination
Oh Prince Saint Exupery Little Prince
Dreams would have had to invent you
If God had not
God in his cloud chambers who wondered
What will happen to a poet aviator
In a time of war
Will he dream on ignoring the rubble
Sometimes in my dreams
I see him flying; I long to sing Cantique de Noel
The way my mother did
There is such a beatific look on his dear face.
Angels steering his aircraft home
mary angela douglas 24 april 2024
NOTE ON THE POEM: TRULY MYSTICAL THING HAPPENED AFTER I ADDED THE LINE ABOUT CANTIQUE DE NOEL after thinking I had finished the poem
I WAS FREE FLOATING ON YOUTUBE LETTING WHATEVER PLAYED, PLAY AND INSTANTLY CANTIQUE DU NOEL STARTED PLAYING, CAME UP RANDOMLY WITH TRULY MYSTICAL TIMING…it was instanteous the way the music came up exactly right after I added the cantique de noel line
POETRY AS A KIND OF CONSOLATION SHINES
Poetry as a kind of consolation shines
I love you tiny universe of mine
And healing springs beneath the surface
May you find
Or sipping fresh blue waters from the wells
You happen upon in my still flowery dells
Let bramble and berry grow together
In mild and happy pastoral weather
Take respite from the teeming world
Sad news, and whatever sorrow soars
Into the radiant heavenly light
Becomes in poetry oh so bright
mary angela douglas 24 april 2024
BLUE EMERALDS
For JZ Schafer
My friend wrote a poem with blue emeralds in it
There are no blue emeralds in nature
scattered entries say blue green perhaps with the
Green a dominant chord
But now they exist in his poem
How can I not sigh
I wish I had thought of them myself
But never mind
The significant thing is this
From his poem they shine
And shine
And shine
He was meant to find them
I am content to know of them;
Happy as a chirping yellow bird that
Now they are immortal
In the fairy tale lexicon
Of mysterious imaginings.
where purpling grapes turn to hyacinths
from a lark sprung word of the Christ child.
mary angela douglas 23 april 2024;17 may 2024
ANYTHING COULD BE A POEM NOW
Anything could be a poem now
Without even half trying
Could wake itself up with its own old alarm clock
The kind you cant plug in
Do a few jumping jacks
Read its self help book
And get to work:
Stitching together
A few low lying clouds
There it is
It doodles in the sunshine
Nibbling on some candy corn
It curtseys in the rain
It gives a queenly half turned hand
In the carriage, in the Big Parade
The self made poem
Shiny pre Christmas I’m heeeere
It bounces through small canyons
Ready for the holiday rush
Or prefab, like a tiny house
Perched on a volcano.
mary angela douglas 23 april 2024
ON SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY
How often we are caught in illusions
cannot distinguish star from star
planet from planet
we think we know where we are
but we lose our way
we think we know ourselves
but what can we say
when meadows to quagmire turn
are we bewitched?
Have we learned anything useful
Today is the birthday of William Shakespeare
Who often visited the theme:
How to untangle the dreamer from the dream
Or are we just
A play within a Play.
who find the ghosts
Have led us quite astray.
mary angela douglas 23 april 2024
I THINK OF CLOUDS AT 3 A.M.
I think of clouds at 3 a.m.
And wonder what became of them
Rose bright and gilded by the sun
Now they by moonlight dream upon
The beauty of their former days
And wistful turn the other way
To show their faded side in still,
Dark shadows on the darker hills
I think of clouds and wonder why
They comfort me
As if nearby
Though looking out I cannot see
And yet I feel them, driftingly
Then think I of the living God
Who reigns and lives
some say above
But I think more consolingly
Like clouds He’s likely
still with me
though I cant prove it visibly who made all beauty
out of Love
Who made the clouds rose gilded when
In daylight they like flowers bloomed
blazing in late afternoon.
mary angela douglas 23 april 2024
TABLE GRACES
To my sister Sharon
I remember the table graces
We said over our peanut butter sandwiches
On Saturdays, how grape jelly seemed to me like
Communion and it shone like garnets
How my grandfather cut up carrot sticks to go with the
Sandwiches
Or else, they were tuna fish and so delicious
And we ate them while Grandmother taught her music pupils
So that we were listening to classical
piano music polished to silken perfection
On Saturdays while eating our pbjs or our tuna fish sandwiches
And our root beer floats our apples and oranges
And kindness swelled and piano music
And the sun shone all day.
mary angela douglas 23 april 2024
START ANYWHERE YOU LIKE IN THE BOOK
Start anywhere you like in the book
There are many doors
Stage exits and entrances
Lights that burn all night
balconies with garlands of roses hanging over them
pin prick stars
Suddenly a step into dreams
And sleeping there you are in chapter ten
Sleeping within your sleep
You still keep reading
the mists fall around you, rain blown leaves
Reading has become mere breathing
The switching on of the night light moon
The tune beneath your daylit mind resumed
The passage more real than anything to you
An unspoken agreement
Between you and one who lived before
And lives again, in you.
mary angela douglas 22 april 2024
ARTHUR RACKHAM IN THE MISTS
To the finest illustrator of fairy stories and whatnot who ever lived.
Arthur Rackham in the mists
I met out wandering in my half dreams
Trailing the flowers of Ophelia
Translating the evanescent into the more than evanescent
How did you live, buttering your bread
Eating the boiled potatoes
A magic fish from the fishmonger?
How can anyone illustrate this
I marvel and marvel
The frost that lingers on panes
When the ghosts pass
Surely there must be a Heaven where you are
Painting the angels more transparently.
Refining the silver moon.
the fairy godmother, in apricot.
mary angela douglas 22 april 2024;29 april 2024
NOTE ON THE POEM: added last line: the fairy godmother, in apricot.
on 29 april 2024.
ONLY I, WEEPING ON THE WIND
All things sing that You have made
Even those in the winter shade
The ice in winter of the frozen stream
dreaming of Spring
The tides unbound
The sun unwound
Only I occasionally
Weeping on the wind
Forget the music
And the sound
Of the wind filling up the void
When I cannot find the joys never ending
And long to be
Where there is only You
And beyond this ruined estate
We call the world.
mary angela douglas 22 april 2024
THERE NEVER IS
I saw you limp in tatters down
A snow bright road
The pumpkin shell scattered
The moon a heavy load
plunged from the skies
Dancing days are done
A voice cawed all stentorian from the swallowed sun
There was no dawn
Only the Once Upon
Rose fleetingly
Ah rainbow crowning the
Chrism in the dark
And something whispered
There's glory in the arc
Of the wounded dove;
There never is an end to Love.
mary angela douglas 22 april 2024
HAPPPINESS STARTS NOW
Happiness starts now
I whispered in a dream
To no one but the skies
And God since he was listening
Happiness is glistening
Beneath small stones
Where dark moss grows
Where the ferns bend down
In an unseen wind
It ripples through the water washing over
me in baptismal fonts remembered
candles and saints in the long shadows
It carries me under the opal of the sun
where mild as milky quartz the moon pours down and it
sets me down on shores I almost remember
pale iris coloured in the music of arriving home
And it is my heart that is surrounded verily
By a peace I have never owned.
Before.
mary angela douglas 21 april 2024
REFLECTION ON THE COLDPLAY SONG VIVA LA VIDA
For Chris Martin and his bandmates, for a most beautiful song, loaded with incredible imagery,
truly angelic accompaniment, a wonder, poetry incarnate…a breaking down of invisible walls and to the poet William Blake...
A rushing wind in the music
Angels have gotten into the tapestry
The weave of the song
And we drift on
Mere clouds in the sky
Tangential to blues
Of a different hue
Transfiguring song
Breakers of coloured wonder
Upon the far shores
Angels have gotten into the painting
Let the bells peal and chime
Despite chimerical appearances
Uniting Heaven and earth
Let inspiration rain down
Its golden spears
Jerusalem be saved.
mary angela douglas 21 april 2024
BEAUTIUL IT IS SO ALTOGETHER ALL THAT WE CAN SAY
Whenever I see
The memorial poems heaped up like flowers
by anonymous poets who barely register
in the rolls
I think to myself I don’t know anything
Of veneration for the great Poets of old
Let me be a child again and learn
From those who write but whose work is spurned
Far nobler they
Than those for whom sweet poetry pays perhaps
Or maybe that’s unfounded;it takes courage to succeed
But what matters is the Love we all feel
For every poem in the field
In this we are one.
and make together one grand chorus.
Major and minor bells all pealing
Beautiful it is so altogether
All that we can say.
mary angela douglas 21 april 2024
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY FOR HIS TALE OF GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS
With bewilderment
Three bears
Oh perfect symmetry
Three bowls
One red, one green, one blue
On a rickety table
One LARGE jar of honey in the middle of the table
Three silver spoons
The porridge steaming there
Why did they leave it
IT WILL GET COOL
To go out for a walk
Weren’t they hungry
A question no one asks
Was it a trap?
Were the bears psychic?
Did they know goldilocks was on her way
So many unanswered questions
Journalism, these days
Anyway.
Here she comes
In a striped candy cane dress I imagine
With her best patent leathers on the shiny kind
A small purse to match
An empty house she cries
What fun
And goes inside.
There’ s the porridge
Lets be really rude
And eat some from everybody’s bowl
Here I go.
Poor baby bear.
Not a smidgeon left.
Then she climbs the stairs
Tired from her skipping
Three feather beds
Her toddler legs feel like lead
Oooh bouncy bounce bounce
She falls asleep
Into golden slumbers dreaming deep
And wakens to find three psychic bears
Staring at her
So she flees
Strengthened by baby bear’s oatmeal. Cream of wheat?
Malt o meal?
What on earth are we supposed to learn from this story??
I’ll be thinking
Even in Glory.
Mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
THE MAKER
Who knows but that he keeps
Each blade of grass he ever made
Even the mists of Eden from the first day
For sentimental reasons
Each unduplicated snowflake
In His freezer.
The affection he must have
For all created things
Down to the minutiae, the butterfly wings
The way the sun gleams on the lakes
How could he ever, ever forsake
Much more his broken image in us
For whom we had so little trust
Imagine how much the Maker loves us
You, whoever you are whoever you
dream yourself to be
to make us out of dust and stars.
the foam of seas.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
ARTIFACTS
Lines on the page have faded now
The notebooks of my days are gone
The things I learned to dream upon
I don’t know where they are today
Old homework, all the tests we took
Piano recitals, fairy books
Where in Time’s pockets
Can they be found
What rummage of ours
Can bring them round
Momentos of the days flown by
I think of you and want to cry
Old scrapbooks, photos
Diaries gone
I now remember
In this song.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
AND GRIEVE NO MORE
In the wastelands of my heart
A small bird sings
Unconscious that on the horizon
The sun is falling down
Unknowing, rhapsodic is his theme
And soon the light will fade.
Why cannot I
In the midst of gloom
Take up again the song I used to sing
With clarity of falling rain
With the green woods surrounding me again
Without revealing any pain
Sing the sun back into the skies
And grieve no more.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
PETER IBBETSON
Shifts in the music
I bow my head
They cant believe
The things I’ve read
The blueprints squirreled away.
The Spring preoccupied with snows
And the glitter of Long Ago.
What is it I could have said
When you in the blue hydrangeas stood
To make you understand I could
Read all the tea leaves then.
True dreaming now had come too late
The gates swung shut in all my dreams
The lightning trembled, the earthquake seams
And I bowed down to the earth and prayed
That God in his kindness would spare me the way
To say goodbye to you.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
WHEN SUDDENLY HE DISSOLVES IN TEARS
For Hans Christian Andersen
The swans emerge from the toy castle
Or they seem to
Shine, I said to the tin soldier
It is time
The dancer waits with a heart of tulle
Delicately steadfast on one leg
She will understand
His fortitude
Hans Andersen in the garret of the world
Unfolds his paper cut out swans in garlands
For little children and dreams of being presented to the
King of Denmark when suddenly
He dissolves in tears and fireworks
Over the castle.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
WHY DOES MY SOUL BEGIN TO SNOW
For the glorious lyrical poet, Conrad Aiken for his beautiful story, “Silent Snow, Secret Snow”
Why does my soul begin to snow
Over the far remembered fields
A chill maytime flowering
Half dreamed, drenched in blue shadows or tinted
With lemon, with roselight, from what source.
How can my soul in flurried patterns go
And no one perceive its going
Shift the white gold kaleidoscope now and be found.
See the small skaters in the Christmas distance
The angels twirling round
And spinning lace
That I may not be
A bird without wings, or Being.
Fragile above all fragility
In any implausible place;
Dissolving into a hidden sky.
And leaving no trace.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
LET US BE HAPPY FOR BEAUTY ITSELF
Let us be happy for Beauty itself
Even when it eludes us
Even when it settles, far snows or flowering plum
And unattainably glistens
And sings and sings
While we grow mute
Then let us sing silence,
Let us sing pre language
Feathering its nest
With slow syllables
Crystalizing into the honeycomb.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2024
WHO CAN CONTAIN THE WORLD ITS BITTER SEAS
Who can contain the world its bitter seas
Its sudden shipwrecks and its great unease
Not one of us
Who understands how not to be engulfed by it
But for the grace of Christ
Who understood it all
The loss of Eden
And the poet scrawl
Lamenting it forever;
But finding still
In all of nature
A healing will
And wells of beauty not dried up.
Oh for our sakes he drained a bitter cup
The bitterness of it all
And death was overcome
Then for us all
And our inheritance set right.
And all the spangled beauty of the starry night
REJOICE!
mary angela douglas 19 april 2024
FAR FROM EDEN
Full amethyst the skies are lit
Above the woods where goldfinch flit
And I am far, so far from home
I know I cannot trace the road
By which I came
I wonder truly how to stand
And how to walk on alien land
And what the code of conduct is
When wandering thus without old friends
I mark the landscape in my dreams
And find not one familiar gleam;
Of all the landmarks I have known
Few register where I am now
Mere theatre sets
And so I ask you oh my God
Help me find my place in you
All homes with me are finished now
Who lost the first,
I don’t know how.
mary angela douglas 19 april 2024
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
Fairytale spinning on a wheel
How are you reeling what you reel
How is it you turn the folktale straw to gold
The king does all he possibly can
To mend the christening gone off plan
Ransacks the town for all the spinning wheels.
But fate respins the Shadow steps in
And only one spindle loses the war.
Aurora on the border there
Aurora with her golden hair
Left to her own devices
Was taken unaware
I mourn the king
Who did all in his power
To spare her from the evil hour
100 years and then
She rose again.
And the cruel thorns flowered.
mary angela douglas 19 april 2024
THEY PLANT MY ROSES IN THEIR SHADE
They plant my roses in their shade
And think that I am in a maze
And cannot see above the hedgerows
But the heart knows what it knows
I know the plantings of my rose
Upon my holy palm it grows
In prescience only I can recognize
And I know what we plant we sow
We cannot reap another’s woe
Or joy.
And if we live by subterfuge
And using others in a ruse
The counterfeit angels cannot, will not
Save the garden.
mary angela douglas 19 april 2024
I COULD NOT BEAR THE VISIONS OF EZEKIEL
I could not bear the visions of Ezekiel
As a child
Nor can I yet and long to forget beyond oblivion
The terrible images of the beasts with four faces
Linked by their terrifying wings
It is a sorrow that I cannot understand
The Lord God in fury
I want to go to all corners and cry
To some far corner of
His skies I am only dust
Unless you keep me alive
Oh soothe the nightmare feast;I am so afraid.
But then Christ’s tender voice I hear
Beyond afflictions of the years
Beyond the dreadful prophecies
Beyond the haunting of all dreams
The judgement of the world.
I feel his presence, feel his care
The bruised reed surely he will spare.
Mary angela douglas 19 april 2024
APRIL, MT. ST. MARY’S ACADEMY
April’s verse is still pale green
After all that we have seen
Like a mist upon the trees
Cloudy as the distant seas
April’s verse is all my ease
Chill the wind the shadows flower
It Is still her dawning hour
Bridal as her petaled trees
Flower snow on you or me
Walking in the dew sprung morn
Through the shining grass to prayers.
Breathing in, the flowered air.
mary angela douglas 19 april 2024
POOR CHILDREN LOST IN THE WOODS OF THE WORLD
Poor children lost in the woods of the world
And tangled in moonlight
How will you survive the fairytale road
On the pages where all grows dark
And you must ferret out on your own
Whatever is left of light
And console one another
Pity has no name but yours
The Madonna wrap you in her cloak of sighs
Gold roses fall to earth while you slumber
In Heaven it will not be this way
In Heaven it will not be this way
Mary angela douglas 18 april 2024
LOOKING THROUGH THE SHADOWS FOR GALILEO’S MOONS
Looking through the shadows
For Galileo’s moons
I thought I dreamed of sunset
But it was only noon
Wild onions grew
The rivers flowed
The moons gave a peculiar glow
And under the nightshade of the sky
I sang for you old lullabies
I sang for you.
mary angela douglas 18 april 2024
WHERE LOCUSTS HAVE MARRED THE STARS
Where locusts have marred the stars
Lord do not let go my hand
Where the clouds mass
And leave no colour lasting in the mind
And we feel our way just like the blind
And snow ourselves in
Where numbness sets in
And echo location find how things dissolve sometimes
As though they had never been
Or of the wind we phasing dream we are a thousand moons
look down upon me floating there
near the rivers of despair
where small twigs tremble through the eclipse
and Tearfully recall the birds
You be my songbird then oh God
in this implausible ballet
I wildly improvise from day to day
The white gold singing while the deserts
Strand me. comfort me with invisible apples
glazed upon a crystal tree
oh God remember me and kern
a space to quarter turn.
away away from this minor key.
that I may learn Thy love of me.
mary angela douglas 18 april 2024
BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT
They stole my tears
From my bright song
Because they could not
Squeeze out tears of their own
Or afford the price of paid mourners
At the funeral of poetry
Dry nightingales with hearts of stone
Who dressed you up in my scarce finery.
Oh Keats could sing around them in faery rings
In his sleep;in former incarnations
They sucked his dreaming breath as well
And suddenly his poems acquired a dank and sere air;
He could no longer breathe.
To what shall I compare this strange garland about my neck.
Artificial winter snowing everywhere
My signature and Time as I felt it to be more than borrowed
The slight music that was written in me
By the Lord God I have honestly received
It seemed to them honorable to do so
To snatch and then pretend
Imitation was for them
A form of honoring me
False nightingales, fetch jewels from elsewhere
Though It wasn’t hard for me
Near the too disenchanted stream
To find fresh tears
When they did this.
Oh Judas kiss on a primrose day
What honor it is to be honored this way
Only Christ can really say.
And I cry Cherry Ripe down to the ground.
mary angela douglas 18 april 2024
MY SISTER WAS LIKE A CHARM
My sister was like a charm
On the bracelet of the sun
My baby sister
Grandmother gave us yellow gold bracelets
My sister was the tiny hinged piano
That was her soul to me finally and the treble clef as well
She was all music
She was made of It from the beginning
Toddling out in her apricot Easter dress
That matched mine
But which she wore
Like a diffident jonquil
You could only adore.
Later when she had words
The flower talked and said to me
With a rosebud pout
You are only 18 months older.
I laugh to remember and the laugh
Turns into music too.
mary angela douglas 18 april 2024
INCORPORATE BEAUTY I HEARD THE ANGEL SAY
Incorporate beauty I heard the angel say
To me? I questioned
Not sure if I was meant to overhear
But still the music repeated itself
And no one else was there
Incorporate beauty in every line
Decipher nothing
Speak as a child speaks
Echoing
The leaves with their sweet veins appearing
Translucent in light
Almost as light itself
Green, green as your shining.
Feel on your face as the baby feels
The warmth of the sun barely hatched
Not knowing yet
It is divine love.
happy that you are here.
And beaming.
mary angela douglas 18 april 2024
MY HANDS ARE LIKE A CAGE OF LIGHT
My hands are like a cage of light
That do upon snow pages write
And blizzard forth what they may dare
In frost upon the winter air
Or I am like a pane of glass
Through which the Holy Ghost must pass
The spectrums divide
That I may sing, Christ by my side
Small prism, that I am.
mary angela douglas 17 april 2024
