PARTICOLOURED CLOUDS HAVE GATHERED

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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 sing

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.

mary angela douglas 25 april 2024

TRAIN

 

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

 

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

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

 

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.

mary angela douglas 23 april 2024

ANYTHING COULD BE A POEM NOW

 

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

 

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.

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

HAPPINESS STARTS NOW

 

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

 

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

BEAUTIFUL IT IS SO ALTOGETHER ALL THAT WE CAN SAY

 

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

 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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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, 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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

AS IF IT WERE A DOVE

 

AS IF IT WERE A DOVE

Clouds called my heart

As if it were a dove

Fluttering in the tree of my life

Do not depart my soul too early

I light the candle of the lantern moon

It sways through the ebony trees

And is crowned by this sunset alone

Of colours indisputably from the Renaissance

My heart is a dove

Captive on the earth

That croons over the dark waters

It flutters mothlike near the stars

In all my dreams configured

Where Icarus keeps falling from the skies

And there are no nets of light

To drain the seas for him,

Oh jade wave…

mary angela douglas 17 april 2024

FIERCE TYGERS

 

FIERCE TYGERS

I lean my ladder against a pale mint  sky

And know that William Blake somehow

Is standing by

Still in a visionary stance

Among his angels

His bright glance

Alights on meadows Ive not seen

And charts the river thames for me

The legacy of misery the spent tears gold

Among the ghosts of what had been

And watercolours melt the sun

Jerusalem my heart is free

To seek your visage constantly

And find in Christ the lamb

Fierce tygers.

Though all our battles won’t be one

I praise the Rose that in him bloomed

I praise the pastoral, sober tune

I praise the angels in the trees

I praise his sorrow I praise his glee

And what the End shall ever be

William Blake with a simple reed

William Blake, in the vanishing point

Of the world still singing.

mary angela douglas 17 april 2024

AMERICAN FOLKSONG

 

AMERICAN FOLKSONG

Rhubarb sky

Piece of pie

Silken corn

Break of morn

Let’s make an American folk song.

Railroad strike up all night

raspberry sky

Wonder why

Square dance spree

Not enough for me

Slavery’s stain,

So ashamed.

Midwest trains

Autumn rains

Ruin the crops

Turnip tops

Peach grove freeze

On our knees

Riverboat sorrows

Come tomorrow

We’ll be free

You will see

Cornbread please

Mess of greens

Bacon fat

Where it’s at

Grief to joy

Pain alloyed

Boy oh boy

Love will reign

Christ is gain

Nation changed

Rearranged

Buttermilk sky

God is nigh.

Every tear from your eyes

He will wipe away.

mary angela douglas 17 april 2024

SUMMER TREAT

 

SUMMER TREAT

The soft serve swirl of the distant moon

Has made my summer go out of tune

My ukelele on the wall

Starts thrumming to the cricket’ s call

My sister’s ukelele too starts humming

Cherry topped cones oh keep them coming

Both went to camp and now returned

They awaken in our magic room

And hint at something

With a nancy drew clue

to us in our rose bud pajamas

And suddenly we

Smell midnight ice cream the way that we smell snow

Our gramp and grandmother

In the butternut kitchen

Eating golden vanilla without us oh no

Pitter patter, here we come

Dancing  to a soft serve drum

Two more bowls with silver spoons

Underneath the nilla cream moon

Oh how neat

Summer treat

This refrain

Repeat repeat

And dip the Big Dipper

In ice cold lemonade.

mary angela douglas 16 april 2024