SOMEWHERE TODAY, BY SOME SMALL STREAM
Somewhere today, by some small stream
That bubbleS in a leafy woods a small fern uncurled itself
After the summer rains
This fragrance made the birds sing more
Not a notable event
This wont be on the evening news
Or greatly discussed
But in my wilderness I dream of it
And I know this also happened
Is happening
Is beautiful, and as it should be
mary angela douglas 24 june 2024
WORDS COULD FALL
words could fall from great heights
petal soft from the Tree of Heaven
Springtime words, hush thee, sleep my child
Sweet child; words, breezes to
Cradle thee in thy morning sleeping;
Flower scented, the little winds bring only a
whisper of
warming sun
Upon you, little one
In dreams it is always this way
That the day is forever breaking;
Their nightfall never comes.
mary angela douglas 23 june 2024
CIRCUMVENTION
Sometimes I wonder
If the guardian angels of artists
At times hijack the work of art that is turning morose
And tilt it toward the Light laughing
So that suddenly leaden skies over looking the city
Flame up all cerise roses
I don’t know what happened
The artist will say, sing, paint, write, explain
I know I was seeing it all in black and white
But the film came out in colour
Water into wine, sunken into climbed
Elegy on the street converted to hands in the air Praise
When the music skips a beat
And the children start dancing
In the summer sprinklers
All crowned with purple clover from the vacant lots.
mary angela douglas 23 june 2024
MEADOW FLOWERS YOU HAVE CAUSED TO GROW AT OUR FEET
Meadow flowers you have caused to grow at our feet
Clouds you have massed and coloured fantastically
Above our heads
Trees you have made to show to us rootedness in the earth
And how to branch dreaming among the stars
How is it that we imagine you do not love us
That you do not care what happens
That you wound the watch and forgot it
You never rose up against us in our infancy
In the infancy of your world
Oh that we were still in Eden
There are times on earth in a honeyed light
We suddenly feel that we are
Breathing with you again the emerald air as it was there
Again, You dazzle us
Without you we would have remained dust
You did not take the rainbow from the sky
Your imprint fingerprint from our inmost souls
Without you without you
Oh how can we most gracious Lord God
You who have flung your wild and pure heart
Into the universe, in beautiful anguish
For us in this maelstrom, ever be whole
Come back, to plant the lilies in our souls
in the new Jerusalem.
mary angela douglas 23 june 2024
ON A DAY WITH SWEET BUNS
On a day with sweet buns
It seemed the wind was coated with cinnamon
Cinnamon sugar
And a hint of icing on them was close enough to birthday cake icing
To make it feel like it was almost your birthday again
And where were the candles then you almost thought to ask,
laughing
And a little nutmeg in the sweet bread, heaven
On a winter morning where you must wear your winter stockings
To school and a serious jacket though it may be cherry
Even in the South and there is a cranberry tint to the sky
We are wistful for Currier and Ives on tea trays
Because it is probably near Thanksgiving in any case
And so the sky cooperates and you are the gladdest thing
Coming and going from home when the heat vents are open
And you are warm as toast and the Holy Ghost and Christmas
Are beckoning
Who knows what sweet buns portend…maybe with an orange rind dusting
I imagine,
Even now.
mary angela douglas 22 june 2024
Who can say with certainty
The lemon sky in the poem is not
A kind of lie by the poet
Who never thought of the sky that way
And if the sky were in fact on the witness stand
It would say so in a cloudy language but nevertheless clear
Or partly clear
In between gales of rain and flights of bluebirds
Under a lemon sky perhaps the poet made a fortune
The sky gets no royalties
Only the satisfaction of knowing
That it can turn to lemon
Anytime the Lord God pleases to make it happen.
and I will raise a glass of iced instant tea
from former days since I may no longer drink tea
With its splash of lemon
And nothing else added
To the sparkling and icy fact that
Yes, this is the truth.
And this poem means what it says
In a delicate way
And this poet loves,
You can and you may be certain, in fact,
The lemon sky.
mary angela douglas 21 june 2024
THE POETRY TRAIN
I like to ride my poetry train
I like its many compartments
In my dreams they are myriad
Some lined with pearl
Others upholstered in stars
Oh you are so gaudy the modern poets say
Don’t care I run this train
Im the conductor and the passenger too
The seats on my train are moss green velvet
While maybe you just make do
With barely a metaphor in view
No hard feelings
On this train we always invite the Romantics
To board
You know the ones in school with which perhaps
You may have been bored
Blake, Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley too
They ride first class
Indeed they do
They don’t spill ash
They don’t bash
They don’t talk trash
They give the clouds dreams to dream on
In the passing scenery
All on board I’d like to say
But it’s just not that way.
Peppermint bay next station
After that, the doll nation.
No cynics here.
This railway’s cleared
To love the lemon drop skies
And not to crack wise
at the Beautiful.
mary angela douglas 20 june 2024
ON THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GARCIA LORCA
For the assassinated poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, incomparable,
Lyric poet and playwright of Spain…
Moon my moon
Over the collapsed playhouse
Mise en scene
Moon of melon green
Hung among rafters
Floating above the cherubim
What have they done with him
What have they done with Garcia Lorca
Flee Madrid my soul they told him
Granada too
Elude the shadows for all of them
Have come for you
In the fabled hour their searchlights search for you
Like a razor’s edge parting the night from the night
And it is all the angels can do
To avoid the sight of the execution
In the hour foretold in the gypsy hour
In the hour where the cut bird cries out no more
In the white hour where the Holy Virgin cries
Garcia Lorca, what have they done to you
Your moon floats counterclockwise
And drowns in all the fountains
and she is so wrought
That she weeps lilies and carnations
Into a sea of fragrance like nard, like myrhh
and mourns for awhile
so that the summer skies also lose their blue.
In memory of you
In lamentation for you.
And even now
To the present hour
Ahora en este momento mismo.
mary angela douglas 19 june 2024;20 june 2024
COUNTING TO TEN THE BLUE DUSK BEGINS
Counting to ten the blue dusk begins
We hide in the silver moon
And no one finds us
And the moon isn’t telling
Free as the wind in the topmost trees
Free as we wanted to be in childhood
And sometimes were
To nibble in dreams the dish of succulent cherries
To ask to be excused from the table of the King
Who just poured cream all over
A day of rampant strawberries and picnics
Where will we not go that the buttermilk sun
Won’t charm us
It’s His kingdom
Let us deck ourselves in all the flowers
The lily and the rose remembered
The iris the morning glories
Neon trumpets of the joys
That cannot be alloyed.
mary angela douglas 19 june 2024
ENTER PIERROT, LAUGHING
dusk falls in sepia tones
as it always does in the vintage photographs
but pierrot is a complex subject, even so,
fragile as a sifting snow
is he laughing or crying;
will you ever know
the pinwheel effusions of
his summer epochs;
his heart that sows white rosebuds.
seen from the distance,
you are sure his smile is real
on closer inspection, what does he really feel;
no daguerreotype will ever reveal.
is it the sun after rain or the other way round
a hopscotch falling to the ground
a lamentation of coloured chalks
or in pastels,
is he feeling very well.
he’s out for a walk in infinity
in the beau geste you remember best
in carnival slippers on the moon’s crest
or quivering on a quaking wire…
the crowd to please his one desire
what was it you aspired to..
a long time ago I played La Polichinelle on the piano
was
translated into
I only paint his mauve bright tears
his small smile of redacted fears
his penny bright forays…
perceptive angels, do what you must
guard his tremors, cherish his dust
I cannot find him.
mary angela douglas 1 april 2021;2 april 2021;
23 june 2022;24 august 2022;18 june 2024
THEY SHALL NOT STEAL THE SHINE FROM THE WATER
They shall not steal the shine from the water
Nor siphon wild mint from the cooling breeze
Nor bring to any heart’s content again
The restiveness of their unease
Again we hear the thunder from the hills
And view the rainless lightning like a stage propped play
And in our dreams we feel conscripted
By those who would bait the heart in us astray.
Let the stars be true though painted over
Let the earth be green
Though ploughed under
Let all the seeming carry the day
The Lord will take it all away.
mary angela douglas 16 june 2024
REMEMBERING THE COLOR OF SNOW
I remember the color of snow in certain paintings
out of the long ago,pearlescent and wistfully I do recall
the roselight falling across the canvas
the hidden light revealed the inner rose and the outer
becoming one distinction as Dante knew
the point of view no longer in vogue
I remember it do you or snow as azure, as gold as mauve
as the fielding of small questions to the sparrow on my
left hand
bad art is the endless revealing of things I reprimand
almost my sparrow laughs I
said to my sparrow, the one on my right hand who can understand
the princess in exile surveying the dissolving lands
making ragged suppositions
and wintering through odd dispositions
hiding in song unmitigated exile from
the beauty of the colours of snow;
the State's matte finishings of all that was
falling aslant of all predictability
and lamenting that
no one remembers them now.
the melted languages.smashed up kaleidoscopes reeling
the words for all we felt then.
mary angela douglas 23 april 2021;21 may 2024;15 june 2024
FOR DYLAN THOMAS IN THE DARK BLUE DUSK, IN THE GILDED DUST OF WORDS
for the poet Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)
as you were singing that the givers of Light
would have no end that the green rills
growing greener would furl in waves
about us ever near from our Eden's remembered
blossoming and the Christ tonged bells
and that the sun dipped in the clouds down low
would ever arise because in poetry its blazing
more than survives a thing you thought not even
necessary to say
somewhere farther beyond your white roads' chrism
we forgot that poetry is not prose
and no longer gathered the rose upon rose
the once upons. even the dooms of men so praised
so that the prismed web broke
apart weeping and with it the human heart
my heart and where
and what and how in Art will the angels come
to trouble the springs again my friend
so that healing descends and with it
the rustling drifting page illuminated
dappled with apple boughs with the sprouting
of gold and undimmed
when your voice is stilled
when the news is all we know
I cannot comprehend
only that vaguely
blue and darker blue with the dusk
as your disguise the village from afar
you'll view in dreamy profusion muted
and weep for Wales and all you knew
for all that meant to you.
and we go casting about in sighs
Mere ghosts of ourselves
forgetting what you knew.
that bright words, should not be spare
but myriad, like the stars.
mary angela douglas 24 november 2016; 22 october 2021;14 june 2024
CARNATION, LILY, LILY, ROSE (FINAL VERSION)
[on the painting by John Singer Sargent]
we hold the lanterns in our gaze and they shall not go out
the lily, the rose, the lily rose shadows; their carnation
coolnesses, the children will not ravel
the edge of this twilight ever, softly they blossom
in the borders near the clumps of the flowers familiar to them
and the paper lanterns sway in the painting as if it
were a real garden
and only slightly it is, the winds of the carnation, the lily,
the rosied lilies partake of Dream and dreaming
the light, the light diminishing only lightly
we hold within our hearts and
equidistant from firefly as from star
there is nothing
like coloured paper lanterns swaying in the
purple sky remembered this cannot fade the purple shadows by
the painting kept alive
the lights go out or
the lanterns stir in the evening breeze when we depart
instead let
the carnation breeze be remembered, the beautiful the beautiful
weaving of lily and rose all before and after
shining, the summer light seeping from long ago,
the childish laughter
glow worm gloss and
mysterious mosses,
the self-same lanterns in our gaze wherever the painting goes
or in the galleries of our minds
the night that will never fade
the distant song forever distant
time and the flowers at a standstill
the children, murmuring
mary angela douglas 19 february 2015 rev.11 june 2015; 23 january 2018; 16 november 2023 ;20 may 2024;14 june 2024
POEM FOR SAM WELLER AN IMPRESARIO FOR SURE NOW (REVISED FINAL VERSION WITH FORMATTING)
it is never too late for something amazing to happen
for parrot colours to show up in the sunrise
for chinese puzzles from pieces of delicate ivory to fall apart
and become the fairy tale fields
and the snow drifts of the Christmas heart
for clouds edged in red violet crayon to float off
the colouring book page
for outrage to melt into cotton candy pinks and blues
for cartwheels to become once more the preferred way of
escalating down rain
watercoloured
sidewalks in the cities, and with parasols
for stripes and polka dots to match with or without clown shoes
for families to linger in the morning light,
in the apricot light at their breakfast tables
indefinitely and olly olly oxen free
for the grass to taste deliciously of spearmint and wintergreen
for singed angels to emerge from the rescued books of Montag
to thank Ray Bradbury for this in person taking the bus to Mars
to thank your parents and teachers by sending them valentines
in the afterlife
for the old to grow young
for the young to grow old
for the green glades in your mind to become vaster.
and filled with emerald songs.
mary angela douglas 18 may 2023;13 june 2024
*Sam Weller, the highly acclaimed one and only official biographer of the great Ray Bradbury, (THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES: THE LIFE OF RAY BRADBURY) and brilliant author and benevolent teacher, in his own right and liberty.
BLUE, NOT THE BLUE SHADING INTO LILAC (FINAL VERSION)
