ON FIRST READING DANTE'S PARADISO (REPOSTED, REVISED FINAL DRAFT)

 

ON FIRST READING DANTE'S PARADISO

I used to wonder: did he write this from a kind of goldenness
fountaining up in him the way tears well up in others
and there I was in the collegiate sunshine reading blinding gold.

to anyone else it would seem I was quiet there even placid
with my bookstore paperback copy of The Paradiso

in the Ciardi translation

on my own as we had no course on Dante then..

the walls dissolved around me and I was stunned

at the flights of such language the architecture

of it in a kind of vertigo

of dizzying light echoed and reechoed 

like a honey accrued outside of time

 
and there were divine suns everywhere

a multifaceted design
catching the woods on fire and beyond the perimeter

of our small school and the St. Louis sun made obeisance
to the several ones and then disappeared
and there was soaring as in the Icarian mode and yet redeemed

and music falling through several atmospheres
while we moved from star to star in the Immovable
the Only True Heart, I and my soul together singing

and if anyone had come up to me in the student cafe

and asked, do you forget where you are when you read
after a dazed blinking moment I would have answered: yes.
you cannot imagine how much.

mary angela douglas 27 november 2017;16 may 2024

THE SNOW SLEDGE DRIVES THROUGH LACQUERED LANDS (FINAL VERSION, REPOSTED)

 

THE SNOW SLEDGE DRIVES THROUGH LACQUERED LANDS  

the snow sledge drives through lacquered lands

through fairytale collapsed remands

and I have lost my way again

biting in half for sustenance

the raspberry chill of former syllables.

Anna Akhmatova: you are in my heart

but the Snow Maid's pastel musings still

could vanish overnight in any country where

darkness singes, mimics light since

beauty is always melting here on earth

and sometimes by decree

Anna Akhmatova, you are in my heart

even though I am hardly Russian

and I don't know why your

white flocks have been driven to

my door as though seeking shelter-

in every weather your especial Firebird gleams

fiercely above these scenes of quite human

distress where with each fresh travesty you

do need air to breathe and poetry

to remember who you are

even when diaries are scarred beyond recognition,

your cameo light

beyond all inquisition,

your swans scatter seeking they know

not what, they know not where;

consigned almost to classical despair

and yet not mute

Anna Akhmatova or with a still

defiant air

standing in the ruins or lifted, in

the snow-clouded hands of God-

mary angela douglas 9 september 2009;15 august 2022;rev.9 march 2023

THE HONIED BUTTRESSES OF LIGHT UPHOLD (REPOSTED, REVISED)

 

THE HONIED BUTTRESSES OF LIGHT UPHOLD

[to St. Joan of Arc]

the honied buttresses of Light uphold
the dream cathedral where the reluctant King is crowned
no longer evading, disguised

and testing her surmise
still in her dreams she stands apart
legendary beyond all powers

cast in a rose and lilied art, shadowed by her saints.

I envisioned her so oh but
no longer the maid of private hours and orchards.

no longer for her the intricate shade
of the Fairy Tree of Domremy

but she must leave, Heaven sent
with the white tree scattering
last, the lights of home, sweet petaled farewells...

in battle,clarion clear as the banner she unfurls
we imagine her but barely,
anticipating wounds and then, demise, or victory.

but surely I think, (reading as a child)
there must be some mistake.
a maid so mild

there must be some escape.yet
how could she dream this full a betrayal
kings and clerics on every side: deriding,

peculiar inquisitions, fire and no flight at all
taking centuries to recompense- but hardly-
with statues, with ceremony, beatification

the songs of the little French children
laying wreaths.

oh grief.

the girlhood lent and savaged
with a cruel intent
where she meant only kindness, flowers,

freedom.courage. the heart unlatched to God;
holiness of nations.

mary angela douglas 14 november 2014 rev. 23 january 2018;15 may 2024

TO POETRY, ELUDING ALL CAPTURE (REPOSTED, LAST DRAFT)

 

TO POETRY ELUDING ALL CAPTURE 

truly it eludes our grasp

with a mist so fine

indistinguishable from breath

slip knot from Time

a sun shrunk to a needle of diamond

that fades in the grass, the leaf at dusk

that yet can shake us turning to rust

surpassing all grief in only one line.

Rapunzel's ladder from the dim tower

in clouded moonlight

in the blinded hour

like granite sometimes 

it may outlast

or fly a variegated kite 

on any breeze of our disposition.

whatever your position on it is

or may become

cast it off, a mere snakeskin.

an anchor of gold the moment you try

to ferret out its soul 

vain assessor, to determine its atomic weight

measure, balance.

mold it is and startling leaves that dazzle the tree

on saying goodbye without an october warning

the ferns underfoot the larks at morning innocent of sin

rubric of the Rose incarnate Dante died for

the wheel of everything that sings and then

that won't let you in oh and green clear green

the very notes of Eden summoning,

cherished in a dream half remembered;

the gleam on which the day depends.

the last postscript:

the last quake summoned

and the last Ark

almost,the map of God.

mary angela douglas 26 october 2021;15 may 2024

RASPBERRY BUTTONS

 

RASPBERRY BUTTONS

I don’t know why it sounds so appealing

Sometimes I imagine new outfits this way

Put raspberry buttons on cardigan sweaters

And ladies will act so much sweeter hooray

Put raspberry buttons on frocks they are wearing

Especially the peach ones, the pink ones, the lime

Then twirl them around and see how they sparkle

It’s the raspberry buttons that add to their smiles

If I were a seamstress and made things from scratch

You can be certain that I would attach

Raspberry buttons on top of their hats

And the world would be merrier for it.

Plus if you took them out for raspberry chiffon icebox pie

They would absolutely match.

nary angela douglas 14 may 2024

NOW WE COME TO THE COUNTING OF RINGS

 

NOW WE COME TO THE COUNTING OF RINGS

Now we come to the counting of rings

On waters and on the trees of Dream

The age of Ice or Rose who knows

The ice crested halos around the threading moon

The threnody of it singing, in me, singing

I have held in my soul like a light cloud drifting

Now we come to the census of years

That cannot be accounted for

When the heart grew tangled over the trails unmarked

And the ferns breathed in

The winds near the waters streaming

With tears or rainfall, who could distinguish

And I then Lord God eluding anguish

 I loved

So many constellations

Waves, the lichen under moonlight as well

The moss on the bark the vines that were trellised

In the half life of shadows

And I clinging to the unseen

The music that was always

Farther away

And me, disappearing

Trying to find the source of it.

That I might attune my Soul.

mary angela douglas 14 may 2024

PIANO

 

PIANO

For Lucy W. Young

There is a piano always weeping

In the corner of my dream,

Poem, reverie, piano grand

Grandiloquent filling my consciousness

With song, dappling transcriptions from memory,

On Tiny gardens,

Joy, the wistfulness that comes

When we were so young

We could not echo locate

The yearning of tender buds on trees

Nor find in any mirror held up to dazzle light

The apricot orchards there, lost clouds

And the skies are milky and I can’t return

Trade in my childish things for one crystal beaded

Note, floating, flying from me oh where

To reprieve the sound, heart sound specific resonance

of the piano rippling like

The waters of home, and Heaven and clarity

Would be to return them all again beloved ghosts

Exactly as they were then

As in the fairytale moments when the tide turns

And goodness returns to the lanes

In the days I lived spooning cherry jam on bread

Innocent of the roads that lay ahead

As children are for the most part oh

Thank God for the piano weeping still

Beyond all possible music I have ever loved

In the plum darkness of my grandmother’s sunlit studio

With the picture window that

Looked out on the Milky Way.

mary angela douglas 13 may 2024

ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, UPON THE TIMPANI OF SPRING

 

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING UPON THE TIMPANI OF SPRING

A dimming music fills the space

And language shows another face

Than what counts for accustomed speech

These days

We know the stars were out of reach

Now that we reach them

What do we feel

Dead rock inside, a little haze

Or barely languor, technocrazed

Where once was light

The ignominy of flight

From what was cherished

In our inner life, and mother of pearl

poetic delight abandoned. epic fail.

Trajectories will fail to show

What made the stars look so like snow

That’s fixed forever in the skies

Beyond the science of disguise.

mary angela douglas 13 may 2024

TO MY MOTHER IN LIEU OF EMERALDS

 

TO MY MOTHER IN LIEU OF EMERALDS

For Mary Adalyn Young Douglas, of blessed memory

Twirling and whirling

Out of a summer saffron sky

Dorothy’s hurricane

Passes me by

That close to the Emerald City

In my prairie reverie

My mother comes to me

Dressed in a gown like Glinda’s

And with a real magic wand

And makes me dream again

All the once upons

And I wake up and say

Oh Mama

Can we have cornbread today

In memory of the stories you wrote

About cornbread corners

And we will laugh gaily and spoon on loads

Of strawberries and what not on the corn bread

And revel in literary bon mots

That we make up like leopards with spots

Just for entertainment’s and making it rhyme’s sake

And to say we both came originally

My dears

From the exact same Tea Party.

Dressed in pink linen.

mary angela douglas 12 may 2024

CONVERSATIONS

 

CONVERSATIONS

 

Here in between the folds of mountains and valleys of

the papier mache maps we made in school

I suddenly find in memory’s store

such tremulous conversations

I cannot butterfly pin down or word for word imply

The golden threads of them

Hearts miasma oh let us dial back

The sun dial shadows no longer telling time under the shade trees and

Only slightly sparkling to indicate the snow capped 

Conversations of what we would do instead

If the most wondrous things turned out to be true

And in our words seemed woven the gold and the blue

Of echoing angels

Why try to explain the miraculous

Just let yourself in with the passkey from God

Tread softly on the moss floors

Examine the walls of milky quartz

Live under the rain proof roof of imaginations dower

We did and spoke for hours and hours.

While God listened in with his peony skies

And the clouds above us grew spangled.

The nights so breathlessly calm.

mary angela douglas 12 may 2024

VANISHING

 

VANISHING

For George Balanchine on the notion of his that with his death, all his ballets should completely

Vanish (as reported by Clive Barnes in the documentary BALANCHINE LIVES)  

With death's stroke how could his kingdom vanish

I tried to feel along the countries. contours of the inexplicable

Like some blind snow angel wondering

How fold one valentine into another in what descending order

Reprieve no more the gestures frail as snow dissolving into the air

As though the ballets had never been

So emerald, so diamond so full of rubies

Of the forgotten gestures of swans In this particular moment

Apollonian, or Mozart filled rising to the occasion of Heaven

Wings borrowed from another time; Stravinsky's elan

Firebird blazing no more, these escapades

Upon the living stage

Quixote's lamentations, Titania's retinue

Where vanished, where the jazzy splash

Accorded its due the tightrope crossing

Balanced with the serenade triumphant

Falling from the bridge of air again of music

Where, the beloved faces his dilemma

With a secret smile that shimmers and is gone

Softly as into dream sand choreographies sifted 

Sink like a kind of Atlantis of the Dance

From which he will not return.

mary angela douglas 12 may 2024

ATLAS

 

ATLAS

I wonder where I put the atlas

I used to have near at hand

With all the streets of Disneyland

Marked out grid by grid

And the castles truly I planned

On living in later

Surely it was pink and green

The map of all those countries

And we looked through our binoculars on Saturdays

Thinking the ships should arrive at any moment

What shall I colour in of what remains

Standing amid my brightly coloured gardens

Trying to remember the flower names

I know there are hidden countries

Even more than I knew it then

That if we could find them

We would be full of so much solace

And so many singing birds

We would have eluded all grown up pain

And stirred to peace again, we would sway

on amber hammocks strung between

The trees with the golden apples.

There in the zenith of home

Where the green waters foam

We would plant our flags

Float our swan boats around the happy park’s glad perimeter

And never return.

mary angela douglas 11 may 2024

WITHIN THE DIFFICULT MOMENT

 

WITHIN THE DIFFICULT MOMENT

Within the difficult moment

There is always an escape hatch

There angels wait

And beauty quells the sorrows

And the green and blue of earth mingles

And like a mist covers

The weeping savannahs of the soul.

mary angela douglas 10 may 2024

REST IN THE CURVE OF THE WORLD TURNING

 

REST IN THE CURVE OF THE WORLD TURNING

Rest in the curve of the world turning

When the light leaves watch over you

With silver sweeping winds when the shadows shift

Into lullabies for the smallest creatures

shine breathing in a faint starlight

all silken in your dreams

That have found you

Bringing small and fragrant bouquets

Oh rest.

In the night so hushed and blessed

In the magnolia darkness.

In the rustling boughs of God.

mary angela douglas 10 may 2024

IN A MILD CLIMATE (FINAL DRAFT)

 

IN A MILD CLIMATE

In a mild climate

When trees are dreaming

We are all their clouds

And no shadows pass across the orangeade sun

Because the world is all of gold foil

As though Heaven had arrived not that

Incognito on the morning milk trains

And children drowse as though breaking

Into flowers were the usual thing to do

We will eat tangerines 

And wear indigo and lemon in silver rooms

And tell extravagant stories

To the clocks

So that pleasantly distracted they will forget 

To tell time and let the picnics go on all day

Now like spun honey the afternoons have come

To trumpet the fairytale endings beginning again

And with a flourish of magenta, writing our names

In cursive in coloured chalks 

No rains can begin to erase

We shall proceed so Christmas merrily

As though nothing at all

Were wrong with the world

And all the forests remained enchanted.

mary angela douglas 10 may 2024;16 may 2024

LITTLE INEQUITIES IN MY DREAMS

 

 

LITTLE INEQUITIES IN MY DREAMS

 

I sent flower gardens

To coastal Californians

Not one gilded lily postcard in return

I prayed for them under the honeymoon moon:

Honey, miel, orange blossoming language

God saw me then.

What shall we do I said to him

With the little inequities

The exchange of Italianate marble for silly putty

The bouncing of my one green ball

Into the palace hallway

Guarded by fierce dogs.

The droning of aeroplanes over the summer horizons,

the orange groves

Where the irretrievable shines.

mary angela douglas 9 may 2024

 

FOR CAEDMON

 

FOR CAEDMON

Caroling blackbirds sing on

In the ruined margins of the daydreaming monk's

notation

And thus were the glass bell ringers

Suspended in my song; 

Bells fuming on a purple wind

And envy set in

Like a bruised cloud

Over the innocent Sun.

But May shall return cerulean music

And in wild violets I will find the snows

The festal crowns the maypole ribbons 

In shunned reveries

As a girl I had let go.

mary angela douglas 9 may 2024

ONCE IN A TINY BLUE MOON

 

ONCE IN A TINY BLUE MOON

Once in a tiny blue moon

May I remember to praise You

For dropping the silver gold moon

Like a cooling floating coin so fair

In so many phases, colours everywhere with

Even strawberry, cherry popping names

Into the darkness simply to reign

To coat in silver my shadow as I pass

on blades of grass weeping milk jade in my secret passages

Coming out of the waning winter earth

For ambient birdsong for the rush of wings

For flower scented winds that spring

Laden with lilac or lily oh rose!

For our refreshment

May I bow down at least on my birthday

With orchid sighs

For every tree that rises

Rooted in earth

Green guardians since my birth

And many before my time so leafed and richly

In their being lining the avenues of my feeling

And for the gift of sleep

Leading into dreams

Staircase by staircase

Away and gently from all I fear.

mary angela douglas 9 may 2024

MORNING GLORY SONG

 

MORNING GLORY SONG

Out of the river of endless stars

How did you come to be where you are

How can you ponder it being so small

Instead you turn

To the garden wall

And play in the shadow of morning glories

Purple and orange and bluish pink too

And know in your heart

Though you cant quite say it

That you are part of the morning too

mary angela douglas 9 may 2024

FROM A SILVER LADLE

 

FROM A SILVER LADLE

Nailing the floorboards down with golden nails

Washing the diamond dust from the windowpanes

I let the rains, the sleet

I look out to see the world of the ice storm

Encrusted with gems

And the bare branches scraping against the violet sky

And I drink canned soup

From a silver ladle

Its minestrone

While dreaming of gazpacho

And summer tomatoes

In bare feet I pray as if God were a cloud

In a cloudy way; oh Im still twenty

On the rooftop of straw to

Slumber so under the the rose printed quilt

I was bequeathed; 

Lined with fleece, gift of the angels.

nary angela douglas 9 may 2024

BRIGHT WAS OUR FORTRESS BEFORE FADING

for MZ

 

BRIGHT WAS OUR FORTRESS BEFORE FADING

Bright was our fortress before fading

When the snow skies cleared

And the sky was in strips of azure

With the sapphire light shining through it

How glasslike they seemed

The places we went to reenact

The imaginary battles, the toylike scenarios

If only all history had been so

Or war had come to mean in any language

People throwing flower petals at each other

In the orchards

Or drumming had only been

Because people loved red and gold parades

And raspberry raz mah taz and all that glorious fizz

Dear God, let there be no more dead.

No more moribund exits from the stage

We are anguished from fighting what never wants peace

But constant stirring up of the earth in turmoil.

You made us for tranquility

Like the blue white depths that exist in Space

Where only music is.

Restore to us the apricot lullabies.

And to Yourself, the apple windfalls

Of wine and gold.

mary angela douglas 8 may 2024

WE DREAM OF THE GARDENS OF THE LORD

 

WE DREAM OF THE GARDENS OF THE LORD

The sacred blush of skies and roses

Perhaps the Lord our God is near

In the cool of the day in his dream gardens

Counting and watching the bluebells sway

And we’re in His dream where Eden stayed

And time and history just flew away

Leaving the peace of the hills and the dells

and all of us healed by His beautiful spells.

mary angela douglas 8 may 2024

TIME IN ITS APPLEWHITE BLOSSOMS DREW NEAR

TIME IN ITS APPLEWHITE BLOSSOMS DREW NEAR

I carried bright blue berries up the hill

In a pailful of luscious

In my picture book dream

In the honeycomb sunshine

And happy to see

Along cream coloured fences

Sweet peas in all colours were

Flowering for me

To live in the house

With the Kelly green shutters

Seemed all that happiness could bring

Near the bluebird sky that never could die

In a picture, a picture

Of you and me.

But time in its applewhite blossoms drew near

And cast its real shadows

On every page

And I said goodbye to the paper parades

The circus departing

In zinnia array.

mary angela douglas 8 may 2024

MAY EVENING, GARDENIA STARRED

 

MAY EVENING, GARDENA STARRED

I want to study the history of dreams

Dreams as they came to me

Half melted in sunlight

Buttercup strewn in early Junes

On the thin dime of a realm

I want to study war as a figment

Empires made of snows

Freshwater wishing wells

Passing away as unnecessary

Only us melting over The door jamb of dreams

Early or late

Someone else is at the gate

With a bouquet of multicoloured

Paper flowers or parcels

Of pink candy

And childrens silhouetttes

Traced on brown paper

Your height in the shadow

Marked on the wall

One pristine plaster cast of your four year old hand

That is crumbling into the dust of rubies

Even before this poem comes,

As in music in the chromatic romantic West

To a full

Stop.

Or lingers in the concert hall

When the purple doors of its early twilight

Close.

mary angela douglas 8 may 2024

CODE

 

CODE

If they could have they would have

Charged against the sun

When it beat down too fiercely

On the princess

Made the rivers to run

To fill the moat

When she was encastled

That no enemy might approach

Leave rose trees at her door

Asking for nothing more

Than to breathe the rose crowned air

This was chivalry

Fealty beauty as it was written down

A code of honour

Not of vile demands

A dream Arthurian perhaps

Brought down lost ages

A golden time

In which we tried to live.

Vicariously and secret vows

That some are living now.

mary angela douglas 8 may 2024

RISING ON ONE BRIGHT SHOE

 

RISING  ON ONE BRIGHT SHOE

A pale chime sounds

I know that I

Will rise on one bright shoe

And block the silken steps I know

I never really knew

Were tolling from my dreaming mind

But I was waking every time

And turning rose to blue.

In plum dark shadows

Then in gold

I move beyond

All I’ve been told

And keep the secret things I know

Secret even from myself

Again the fairytale repeats

Its cloudy coda; it is meet

That sometimes through a mystery

We dance

And find the imprint of the snows by chance

Unknowingly upon our souls

Enacting still between the acts and fugitive:

A clockwork poetry

We do not own.

and yet, we illuminate through Grace.

mary angela douglas 7 may 2024.8 may 2024

ALL IN, FOR THE ROSEATE

 

ALL IN, FOR THE ROSEATE

There must be rosaries of the roses

I thought as a little girl

Not Catholic but enchanted with the word

In love with the roseate world

Perhaps I will make now  another

Petal bright secretly drifting excursion

Time travel trip back to my roselands

My secret roselands

Another fairytale attempt to visit

The secret whispering secrets of the roses

On the rose bushes in the corner of our yard

Among themselves, I want to be a denizen

Of the place made out of roses

You cannot imagine how serious I am about this

I am all in for the roseate

For the roses heaped up forever

Under a rose filled sky.

mary angela douglas 7 may 2024

I DONT THINK GOD WANTS TO FEEL LIKE A JUKEBOX, VENDING MACHINE

 

I DON'T THINK GOD WANTS TO FEEL LIKE A JUKE BOX, VENDING MACHINE

I don’t think God wants to feel like a juke box we put the right amount of change in then push SELECT

To hear the record from him we want to hear again

A vending machine while we wait for the candy bar or coke

To shoot down the chute to us

And when we don’t get what we paid for we say we are praying

But all we are doing is jiggling the machine

And kicking it when the butterfinger dangles there behind the glass so near and yet so far

Or waiting for the dimes to come back from the pay phone 

When someone else hung up but it wasn't Him.

I think then He must be so lonely

Just wishing someone would strike up a conversation with Him

Without giving him their Christmas list first or even, at all

Wishes some child of his would crawl up in his Celestial lap

And give him a tiny hug and put purple clover necklaces around his neck

And just say: I love you Papa.

I love you.

Tell me about the Day you made the rain.

mary angela douglas 7 may 2024

PIANO BRIGHT THE MORNING RIPPLES

 

PIANO BRIGHT THE MORNING RIPPLES

Piano bright the morning ripples

In arpeggios of light

Its summer’s long treasury 

Mimosa flowers flutter in the wafting trees

Pink and feathery in our front yard

And everything feels like a golden holiday

Watermelon and picnics under the trees

No schoolroom instead, we study things we like

Our grandparents bring home in profusion

small marvels for our delight and

Because they come from gifting hands

we love to learn them or we revel differently

completely at liberty

among library books we picked out ourselves

Knowing we have no homework pending

feasting on paperbacks in the mail

from the summer weekly reader offerings

in crisp brown paper tied with string 

Sodas in the afternoon sweet carbonations

Or fern fragrant at the summer camps

We walk under glistening boughs after

The summer rains but still miss home

Back again.

And then we feel lavish in our days

As if we splashed in oceans of time

That kind of summer when the roses boiled

In the Little Rock sun

But we had air conditioning on

I remember whenever I want to think

Of freedom, of home

Of root beer floats

hand fashioned by my Grandfather

And movie shows the Saturday matinees

We wished would go on for days

and did in our Disney reenactments

else I dream of Grandmother who

played the piano like Liszt

with her summer litanies to us 

Of music theory and of music never ending

of

The stories we told ourselves

In the cricketing, cooling twilights.

Knowing we were loved.

mary angela douglas 6 may 2024;7 may 2024

;

YOU AND YOUR LOST ANGELS, THOMAS WOLFE

 

YOU AND YOUR LOST ANGELS, THOMAS WOLFE

You and your lost angels, incomparable, importunate, somewhat

Awkward scribe, containing as Whitman said of himself

Multitudes

Striving against midnights to get it all down on paper

How in the world did your recording angels keep up with it all

Even with their vast speed

Kind of a misplaced pilgrim you were

In Asheville blue twilights

Hewn of the Carolinas small griefs like graves

Opened up for you immortal passages

Scattered like diamond dust

You were unperceived

With a kind of largesse; gawked at

Over edited I am sure

Seeking exile from the front porch

Of the eternal everlasting boarding house

Finding no real solace in New York

Whirlwind, tempest, Thomas Wolfe

not marble or the gilded monuments

I imagine I hear you say

where the myrtle flowers sway

your mythos beyond bearing

What flowers shall we lay at your feet

From this clay distance, too late

Thank you I cry to the wild iris skies

enduring, endearing profligate

For trying so hard

To get it all down

Your brother's shadow

Lifted from the ground

The over intensity with which you lived

I hope your wars are over now.

Abundant, burgeoning, Shakespeare 

In another incarnation

Passing so disconsolate, soon from the world

Looking homeward, looking homeward

Looking homeward.

mary angela douglas 6 may 2024

WE DON'T ALWAYS LIVE IN THE WORLD WE THINK WE DO

WE DON'T ALWAYS LIVE IN THE WORLD WE THINK WE DO

We don’t always live in the world we think we do

You slip us into so many pockets

When we cry out or are in distress

The four o clock five o clock flowers close up

And we hide in them or the memories of

Woodland shadows, clouds across the skies

On a day magnificently free of troubles

We hide in music or we are phases of the moon

And only reveal a curve of light sometimes to You

Who understand many moods

Dear Father who endowed us richly with ways

Of escaping chaos and finding the back door to you

Fresh air and breathing

Before the storms come through

The pass key to sanity, grace and beauty

Amidst it all, the blue white light of stars

We had, perhaps, forgotten.

on the long white road

lamenting the bridal trees

in their apricot finery disappearing.

rhe words we meant to say from our hearts

To the vanishing still singing for us invisibly

Our childhood’s garnet songs

Who wait for us, in beautiful expectation, farther along.

mary angela douglas 6 may 2024

COLOURING

 

COLOURING

Take out the crayons; you will start again

To colour in the birds

where they left off singing

Use sky blue and tangerine whatever colors

shine on you and find

As you did in your daydreams then

if you colour the clouds magenta

You are still most secretly the friend of God

Let lemon yellow be your song

When the sun is hiding all day long

And rain confines you to a somewhat dreary place

Add forest green reviving all the trees and softest blue

Beyond the sad things that happened to you;

Wherever there is unease in the world

Make the magic spell it out for you and cast

the waxy rainbow spectrum over anything

Oh anyone and let the pastels thrive

Colouring in the wilderness that is

But once was not alive

And still can be

Make it all apricot everything on the page

Forget the end of days

Forget it all but Paradise

Milk and honeycomb

The light of loving eyes

Breaking the red crayon again

To emphasize the rose will win

In winter snows

Oh cherry bright in your enterprise

Oh child once wise. begin

mary angela douglas 5 may 2024

WHAT KIND OF CONNOISSEUR OF BEAUTY

 

WHAT KIND OF CONNOISSEUR OF BEAUTY

What kind of connoisseur of beauty

Are you Lord God

Who made flowers to slip from April trees

And only from the slightest breeze

As if they were flower snow

And cause poets through all ages

To write poems from heartache

At the fragility of it all

The passing wonder

May we pass into Your Courts

And sleep our flower sleep in You

Past all the winters.

To bloom again

This time, without fading.

mary angela douglas 5 may 2024

LIFE KEEPS ON, A DISAPPEARING STAGE

 

LIFE KEEPS ON, A DISAPPEARING STAGE

Life keeps on, a disappearing stage

Where scenes are played

Then into memory fade

And the child in us cries

Where have you gone

Oh my beloveds

Where are the flowers we ran

To give our mothers

On a day of wind and light

We could not imagine

As anything but heaven

Continuing to be

Honey on toast

And the holy ghost

Will whisper to you later

It was real;

Really, you were there.

This happened;

You were home.

mary angela douglas 5 may 2024

DAMSON CLOUDS ALL OUT OF THE WEST

 

 

DAMSON CLOUDS ALL OUT OF THE WEST

Damson clouds all out of the west

The mystical clouds I love the best

Float by in a sky in a maytime sigh

And crown the trees and all of these

Pearl drenched scenes

Seem out of a dream within a dream

As if there were no trouble on earth at all.

mary angela douglas 4 may 2024

 

 

WHEN CONTRARY THE MUSIC PLAYS

 

WHEN CONTRARY THE MUSIC PLAYS

When contrary, the music plays

When gears grind all the other way

When the maze grows thicker by the hour

When promises are just forgot

And tear ducts gather every drop

To you oh Lord I must repair

Or devastation everywhere

And willful disregard

Turn into my prison term unreprieved

mary angela douglas 4 may 2024

SO SHALL THE BEAUTIFUL ARISE

 

SO SHALL THE BEAUTIFUL ARISE

So shall the Beautiful arise

At the lowtide of the fairytale

And gladden our eyes

That had been so wearied

With sorrow in its manifold disguse

And our hearts be quickened by the fresh winds descending

Angel choirs from the unseen

Drifting bells

And we shall be lulled from earth

And drink from the deepest clearest wells.

mary angela douglas 4 may 2024

THIS IS NO METAPHOR

 

THIS IS NO METAPHOR

What word about You can compare

With the word refuge

God is our refuge and our strength, the golden book says

A very present help in trouble

Present…I think

Remembering when I was called to roll

In school and how I dreaded to be

Present…help

Or to dwell under the shadow of the Almighty

Under even one wing

The most consoling thing

This is no metaphor

This is how we live.

mary angela douglas 3 may 2024

LANGUAGE, MY LANGUAGE

 

LANGUAGE, MY LANGUAGE

Let words be clear and crisp as apples

Fresh as the October air

Let meaning be clear

Transparent, as the first green of Aprils

Crystal as streams from the blue mountains,

Headwaters of dreams

Let there be light in every syllable

And the bubbling of birdsong

Let icicles hang from the snowy roofs

Of wordtown

to break off like stars

In the warming winter sun.

mary angela douglas 2 may 2024