LIGHTLY THE LIGHT YEARS STAND IN BLOOM

 

LIGHTLY THE LIGHT YEARS STAND IN BLOOM

For Rainer Maria Rilke

Lightly the light years stand in bloom

Funneling beauty from a distant loom

Candlewicks quenched and yet they shine

Through so many ages and also in mine

And in my mind on a lissome sky

In argent heraldry,  fleece they lie

as clouds still visible yet invisible 

where the jeweled soul slumbers

And so shall I

All through the night by angels bedight.

 

Oh, lullaby winds from the tree boughs sigh

As they did once from our backyard pines

And hushed is this restive heart of mine

And I am lulled beyond all time

And I am lulled beyond all time.

mary angela douglas 31 july 2024

 

 

ODE TO PERSNICKETY

 

ODE TO PERSNICKETY

Some people have high ambition

To take a one way trip to Mars

To play at Carnegie Hall at three

As for me

I dream I dream I dream

Of putting the word persnickety into a poem

Together with perhaps persimmons, preserves

The princess consumed at the Palace pantry,

unobserved; or perhaps

were pondered plum wonderfully:

Particularities of providential paradigms

Which the voice typing feature on your laptop

Will hear as pair of dimes

As in you don't have a pair of dimes to rub together

But penury is not mine

As I persistently will find

That word persnickety, perpendicular to the roof of the world

I imagine it so unfurled

Im planting a pink peony  flag on its puffy little planet

Right now.

mary angela douglas 30 july 2024

THE MIST OF THE DAY IS NOT MY ARMOUR

 

The MIST OF THE DAY IS NOT MY ARMOUR

St. Joan of Arc Between Worlds…

The mist of the day is not my armour

Shall I hold onto the fairy tree wind

Or look from fanciful windows like

Some Princess

Dreaming of how to win

Voices call as if I were the sea

Bound to a tide like a destiny

What courage is mine

Comes in the saintly visions

And tatters in the brine

of tears

Of all my sad renunciated years

And then over airy cliffs suspended

I live and yet I cannot be

what I was then

Everything disappears

Out of the realm of time

Mist is not my armour

But Jesus Christ is mine.

mary angela douglas 30 july 2024

PICTURE FALLEN OUT FROM YOUR GILDED FRAME

PICTURE FALLEN OUT FOM YOUR GILDED FRAME

Picture fallen out from your gilded frame

Shall I become the Winesap day

Of the far flung dimensions

Picking you up from the kitchen floor

Where you have become most real

Oh let us go outdoors

Under the turquoise bowl of the sky

I feel it may be true

Where the visionary Princess looks out for you and

From these clouds has dropped her handkerchief of snow

And bounced

The oranges back to their groves from the still life oh

Remembering an orange blossom childhood

Where there is frostbite and where it glows

When they come with torches to save you

Still life lovely from a Renaissance day

Shall we have a renaissance too

You and I in our mutual displacements

I wander and I wonder with you

Till the stars come out like flecks of milk

On a baby’s chin

And I say

Let us begin again

And eat the sun like a lollipop

Forever renewed in the sugar cane wind.

mary angela douglas 29 july 2024

 

FOR THAT WHICH FALLS BESIDE THE WAYSIDE

FOR THAT WHICH FALLS BESIDE THE WAYSIDE

For that which falls beside the wayside

Creature, or star from distance incomprehensible

Soul parted from soul

Let there be elegies innumerable

A drift of wind through the green leaves murmuring

Let the clouds sigh over the seas and the seas

Be aquamarine

Let there be the tint of fading roses in the skies

Uncertain the fairytale falters in the rains

That flood with sorrow the mechanisms

That keep us from breathing as if we were free

And endowed by our Creator down to our last resurrected breath

Let the Graces grieve and yet keep dancing

Bare soles on the pale lime turf

Transparent the musing of the eternal primavera

Of the resounding earth

The cry of the small birds daunting the winter, blithe

ah, let there be truth

And no more lies.

mary angela douglas 27 july 2024

THE ROSE AND THE GOLD

 

THE ROSE AND THE GOLD

I was ever for the rose and gold of it,

The roselore twining through poetry

The trellis my own

So have I kept the shine of it

From childhood on

And I will wreath for my darlings

The minstrels far from home

The wanderers of all ages

This wreath of rose

This pause of gold

In their faraway music

I intuit most

when I am all alone.

mary angela douglas 25 july 2024

SO CORONATED HE THE LANGUAGE

 

SO CORONATED HE THE LANGUAGE

So coronated he the language, Shakespeare,

The blue white stars the tiny stars

Leaned from the sky longing to be

In juliet’s heaven

And the fairies caught in the nets of his enchantment

Found with delight the freckled strawberries

In the wild grasses long abandoned

Kings came to his mind and learned to speak

In a more kingly fashion, traitors, those in disguise

Those who fought for their own souls grew more enobled

So had he crowned us, so had he christened us

Into Song.

mary angela douglas 22 july 2024

THERE IS NO END TO WISHING

 

THERE IS NO END TO WISHING

When I am hungry

The thing I’d love most

Is plum preserves on

Hot buttered toast

Butter as sweet and as creamy as cream

And black pekoe tea with radiant steam

In a glazed green fat bellied teapot with pink roses on it.

And I would be good as gold I know

If suddenly then it began to snow

Outside my window;

Inside Christmas glow

Oh plum jam oh butter as gold as the sun

And black tea so dreamy

And fried eggs so homey

And the day all before me like one drop

Of honey from the honeycomb.

mary angela douglas 21 july 2024

ONCE WE SAILED ON THE SEA LANES OF BEAUTY

 

ONCE WE SAILED ON THE SEA LANES OF BEAUTY

Once we sailed on the sea lanes of beauty

On the moss green waters

In the little swan boats

And lost ourselves in the mirrored kingdoms

Where twins to the clouds were somehow afloat

How often in the intervening time

I have wished those sea lanes mine

Still to wander, far from all rhyme

Seeking the mermaid ladders down and silver edged

To the foam of hidden starlight,

and dreaming the bright pavilions.

mary angela douglas 21 july 2024

 

I, FRESH WITH MIRACLES LIKE THE GRASS BEDEWED

 

I, FRESH WITH MIRACLES LIKE THE GRASS BEDEWED

I fresh with miracles like the grass bedewed

Oh that I could warble the skies into orchid,

Snows, the pearlescent where

All quiet grows

And find shelter in my own construction,

Dream oh dream the mariners cried

On the ancient oceans

And I heard them

Fathoms below my soul’s surface

And keep in silence still

For all I know

The pale green vigil

I knew long ago

At home, under the summer trees.

mary angela douglas 19 july 2024

 

CHRISTMAS MYSTERIES

 

CHRISTMAS MYSTERIES

The midnight clears I still can hear

The carols from our fresh made Christmases

And feel the snow air blue with promise in Little Rock

As fresh to me in dreams now as it was in

Living then

How is it  memory embalms so sharply

Times that we once lived and gives us second

Chances to review almost to relive the glittering details

Scents of Florida oranges peppermint candy ice cream bliss

We knew then which had to do not only with

Decorated trees a sense of ease in being home

Of time unfolding like the Magi its gifts

But the sense of epiphany that here though it faded away

Was something mysterious that yet, could stay

We had a vague and sparkling inkling of

And grow more vivid day by day

As the heart cherished, so, remaining with us.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2024

I DO NOT ACCUSTOMED GROW

 

I DO NOT ACCUSTOMED GROW

How familiar I am with the backhanded compliment

The pitying smile yet I do not accustomed grow

Toward who or what would bring me woe

But set my face toward starry light

And guide my path the way of right

And deaf as snow I will become

To those who rob my Kingdom Come.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2024

 

THE BEAUTIFUL DETAILS

 

THE BEAUTIFUL DETAILS

What can we say about the beautiful details

Finely worked, or beckoning after long labour;

A single gleam of the sunlight, then is it gone? Like a dream

Fugitive as any have made it out to be before me;

You must be alert my wayward heart to what can suddenly appear

Even after years

You must not miss the instant something buds out of the

Dark of waiting

On the barren tree nor whisper to yourself disconsolately

It isnt for me for then it will fly away, one flicker of tangerine

To someone else’s Garden gloriously

Leaving you bereft of a song

That could have belonged to you only that oh,

Drifted so far perhaps, to find you.

mary angela douglas 16 july 2024;18 july 2024

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED AT THE CIRCUS

 

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED AT THE CIRCUS

We have always lived at the circus

I imagine myself telling my classmates

In younger years in an oral report

Or in an essay or in later years making

Up a children’s book of this title.

The book will be yellow and red with the picture

Of a circus tent striped yellow and red

It will invite festive feelings from the children who see it

And want to read it and it will have friendly pictures

Of elephants with feather boas of fuschia and electric blue

Im sorry I never can spell fuschia so Im just going with this version

And tiny rhinestone tiaras and the elephants will bow and play with the

Children and never stampede or I am saying this aloud in front of 30 other children

With rapt faces

Oh its quite pippi longstocking’s style I say my hair also in two red braids

You’d be surprised how often we have peanuts in the shell for dinner

And cotton candy for dessert and peanut brittle, pralines…butternut ice cream

And then go off  and do our homework to the sound of organ grinders grinding

Out bel canto merrily

And the clown dolls are happy as in Raggedy Ann stories

And we go on picnics with them and all the dolls every afternoon

And eat little sandwiches like they do in England watercress and

Strawberry jam and cream cheese yes they’ll do

And cheese doodles pipes up my sister in a pink and purple polka dot dress

And I confess with a raspberry lemonade TA DA!! this is as far as I have gotten in the story

Read you more, tomorrow if you’re good, morning glories

Otherwise its Christmas trimming without tinsel.

And you all know , THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

mary angela douglas 17 july 2024

I WANTED TO BE CLEAR ABOUT THESE THINGS IN MY OWN MIND

 

I WANTED TO BE CLEAR ABOUT THESE THINGS IN MY OWN MIND

I wanted to be clear about these things in my own mind

Apple crisp, translucent as the green of April

To be in myself pale blue the colour of a Chopin etude

To go to sleep to the scent of apple boughs heavy with blossom

The humming of stars and planets like toy tops

I wanted to be clear that these images held me up

And not the posters of the spiels of the commercial

Appeals the politics of now

That beauty in its scarlet array upon the slightest autumn day

Was binding me to the earth and to my song.

mary angela douglas 16 july 2024

WHO WILL FILCH GOLDEN APPLES FOR THE KING

 

WHO WILL FILCH GOLDEN APPLES FOR THE KING

Who will filch golden apples for the King

Stealing into the mythic world to bring back tribute

The feather from the exotic bird that snaps in two

The hemispheres;who will retrieve

The blue agate of the earth to make recompense

Let the seas wash over a second Atlantis in the jade shadowed

Sorrow of a disaster perceived too late

still may we find another home even through blind faith

As many times as the tale can be told

By those who are living it

Or dreaming it as it recurs

And turning the music box slowly with an antique hand crank

In a snow starred reverie

So that the charming figures come to life

And the quadrille continues, my sainted love.

mary angela douglas 15 july 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOLORIFUGE

 

DOLORIFUGE

Lovely in meaning the word coined by Hardy

To the fury of his reviewers

A word of satin and honey a balm upon the miseries

In music kin to me, for me, a fugue

A fugue that softens grief one thinks of Bach

Illimitably beautiful oh my dolor what quenches you

The far flung fountains of the Spirit

Have come to be through a word so blessed

Like water spring water gushing from the rocks

Of all my restiveness.

mary angela douglas 15 july 2024

NEITHER PRINCESS NOR DRAGON

 

NEITHER PRINCESS NOR DRAGON

Neither princess nor dragon

I trod the golden road

Not expecting any favors

Doing as I was told

But still, straying when the clouds massed

In the Heavens the color of amethyst

When it was to you Lord God

I brought my lilied my baffled heart

My dandelion puff striations

Neither princess nor dragon

Shining in the dark.

mary angela douglas 14 july 2024

THE BAD GUEST

THE BAD GUEST (REVISED)

Was I a bad guest

I ask myself in myriad dreams

The vague kind but with a clear message

Through the mists.

Did I use up heedlessly all the

Rose shaped little soaps

Or help myself to the bbq potato chips

Like a bear in Yellowstone Park

Like there was no tomorrow

And without saying please

I don’t remember it that way

But I felt ill at ease though

I came bearing gifts every day

Though perhaps in small packages

Emblems of my esteem

A maple leaf of red and green

Small little tokens of kaleidoscope blue

And woke from a really bad dream of you

Where the door was slammed against me

In a raging blizzard.

mary angela douglas 14 july 2024

 

  

 

JUBILATION

 

JUBILATION

In a mood of jubilation

Bells are ringing chorales singing

In each snowbound cell of my heart

Let the pines rustle and the evergreens

In a breeze from Heaven quenching all fevers

Let me dance mysteriously in a freedom

Never before dreamed of

And catch at the golden tassels

On the robe of the Lord God

a small child playing

In the bluebell fields so paradisical, paradoxical

come down to earth in more vivid blue violet hues

oh let me remind you

our joy could be endlessly made of prisms.

Let sparkling never cease.

But only grief.

mary angela douglas 14 july 2024

OF ALL THE NAMES THAT MYTHIC NATURE HOLDS

 

OF ALL THE NAMES THAT MYTHIC NATUT\RE HOLDS

Of all the names that mythic nature holds

Caledonia, you are my home

My gold my hoard my distant strand

Whatever God has saved for man

Souvenir of Eden bewept,be spoken

Over the roiling of the world

Envy and strife

Will come to naught

The sly tripping on the stairs

By devils so aware of our innocent striving

Let them take a care

That upward God will wend us

On his wings of fire

And in his loving ire

Repay

Those who mocked us in the fray

To wound and dissemble our dreaming.

mary angela douglas 13 july 2024

 

WHEN YOU ARE WORDLESS WHEN SADNESS TRACES

 

WHEN YOU ARE WORDLESS WHEN SADNESS TRACES

When you are wordless when sadness traces

No clear pattern on your windowpane

Where the trees grow crooked in the landscape

And scar the dream skies

I will whisper a benediction

Music will weep out of the clouds suddenly

The sun will dance across your inner sky

Though the world martials all the reasons why

You cannot break out into blossom

And the appled days elude you

Bye and bye disconsolate children cry

Finding no place in the alphabet primer to begin

There will be rain flooding the world with rainbows.

Again.

mary angela douglas 12 july 2024

 

 

IMPARADISO

 

IMPARADISO

The air flows mild and imparadising

Through the chinks in the wall of language

I thought was impearled, I thought was upstanding

I thought could be sorted for all occasions

But life is no greeting card no poster on the wall

No attempt to stall the creditors

The air is bright with promise I promise to

Keep this silence secret and cherishing

Remembering how the winter air can break

Off in cruel and silver sunlight where we were once walking

That cannot warm

Oh language like baked bread I would break off a crust of you

And improvise

But still there remain

These pauses in the world wide conversation

We rehearse

In all our dreams

In search of it seems and at a loss

For the wayward translations.

mary angela douglas 12 july 2024

NOTE ON THE POEM:

I have coined the title IMPARADISO . Inspired by a friend of mine on twitter, acquaintance really whose words for the weekend included the word imparadise which according to him means "to make supremely happy"

His name is Cian McCarthy. He is @arealmofwonder on twitter and from Ireland and shares truly unique and beautiful obscure poems of famous or not so famous lyrical poets paired with lovely paintings and of course the word origin series. He is himself an aspiring musician, composer and author.

SAINTS LEAVE ON THE WIND THEY SAY

 

SAINTS LEAVE ON THE WIND THEY SAY

Saints leave on the wind they say

The fragrance of lilies

Heaped up roses

In my sere garden

The curled maple leaf blows

Never again to reach the Tree

That gave it life but I try not to be

Desultory

Let red gold flame

In a momentary wind

Circuitous toward Heaven

Let us be lily of the valley

Gladness

The blue and gold we were

Like a vestment we once wore.

That now is scattered everywhere

In the infinity of afternoon.

mary angela douglas 11 july 2024

BLUEBIRDS UNSCROLLED

 

BLUEBIRDS UNSCROLLED

Bluebirds unscrolled the fairytale proclamations

Holding the ribbons aloft

And we drifted with clouds as though

There were no cares no cares at all in the kingdoms

Of magenta and emerald of an unforeseen violet

Oh winds like a music from the North of anywhere

I have seen the angels at the four corners and

Said it is good oh my soul we should be here

Let us build a tabernacle to the pearl of this day

Never coming back

To the ungemmed stories

They told us when we were afraid

When we were sore afraid.

mary angela douglas 11 july 2024

 

 

MIDSUMMER NIGHT DREAM

 

MIDSUMMER NIGHT DREAM

Casting off the midsummer spells then

By honeyed moonlight planes in the painting shifting

The berrystained confusion

Let love be unfettered released like a dove to only God

The soul returning home

The names and places shifting to reveal

You loved only love as an ideal

Not as a place on the map

 and God is love and the characters in the play

Are figments

In the final season

Where the play has melted from the stage

And the mirrors and mirages abstain from dreaming.

mary angela douglas 11 july 2024

MESSAGE SCRIPTED IN GOLD

 

MESSAGE SCRIPTED IN GOLD

Message scripted in gold

To whom shall I send thee

At this sunset edge

Or shall you fly off

A cloud of music off the staff

And flag the unsuspecting

Traffic of perpetual angels

Now at the feast

I turn away

And from the grape shadows of my childhood

Message made of alabaster

Of the rose quartz quarried heart

What box shall I wrap thee in

What star flecked paper

At last

Post to what address

See I have taken the census of my soul

And inventoried all goods

And stored up my provisions for a

Winter that will not last

I will sing to radiance itself

I will become

The tag end of words

The unknown addresser to

The unknown addresse.

The tenant at the end of all lanes;

The chimes stirred by the sea.

If only you would remember me.

mary angela douglas 10 july 2024

FOR GEORGE HERBERT

 

FOR GEORGE HERBERT

The small birds chirped through the summer grass

They chirped you are not alone, you are not alone        

The Father watches from His throne

They sang. So heartfull and at ease.

All through my soul a sad long day

I heard that birdsong surge in waves

Like water gushing in a desert place

All withering done I found my sun

The dewdrop glistening the welcome crumb

I found a way to keep on praying

As if to May blossoms swaying

And sang and sang myself to sleep

And put away the need to weep.

mary angela douglas  8 july 2024

ENCOMPASSED

 

ENCOMPASSED

West of tears we had buried our hearts

In fine soil as in the ancient myths

North of our devastations

We had lived for Art

Rehearsing the ghostlike declamations

South of all roses, in a blooming land

I dreamed God carried us in His hands

And east of all dreams in the end it seemed

That all of time was just one gleam.

mary angela douglas 8 july 2024

THROUGH A SKY SO TRANSPARENT

 

THROUGH A SKY SO TRANSPARENT

Through a sky so transparent

I can see the glaze on clouds

I wanted to see in that dream

Of apple green, of a fission of roses

Of tears of chandeliered sapphire

Of the river that comes no more to the door

Of the road grown over with honeysuckle and fern

Of the nectar of time sipped clear to

The fading from the stage

Of the former participants

In the dream crowds

Into a white gold light

mary angela douglas 7 july 2024

LET THE SNOW FLY BLIND

 

LET THE SNOW FLY BLIND

Let the snow fly blind

The all seeing Eye will cherish it

And the traveler bent by wind in the story

The one obscure in the Japanese landscape

Even when the plum flowers douse him

Even far from the imperial courts

Where he has made his lodging

To live out his days in the orchards of poetry

So I wander too, not blind but happy

Through imagination’s periscope

To see these sequined scenes and to launch

My soul as upon the floodtide of dreams innumerable

Seems to me oh Lord God despite the traveler in

His importunate night, the possibility of his perishing

Upon a winter’s night

A pastime of inordinate delight

For which I cannot help but praise You.

mary angela douglas 7 july 2024

SOME THINGS THAT MAKE YOU CRY

 

SOME THINGS THAT MAKE YOU CRY

I wrote a poem about some things

That make you cry:

The war of words

A bird against the sky

The snow iced lawn

The hidden question why

Are fragile things mistreated

When we know they sigh

And we sigh too

For what we are denied

For what we have denied

That beauty passes

And that sweet innocence can die

But oh of things that I have understood

There is little I have wondered

That the world is full of good

For God is nigh

Though circumstance may say

Past Spring’s soft blushing rose

The hunters quiver full before the startled does,

I lie.

mary angela douglas 5 july 2024

NOT A THING YOU WOULD HAVE NOTICED FROM THE BEGINNING

 

NOT A THING YOU WOULD HAVE NOTICED FROM THE BEGINNING

Not a thing you would have noticed from the beginning

How the moon appeared in so many poems over Time

Each one a separate sky

Each one a golden link

In another story

Like a white rose unfolding

Age by age

Like a white boat vanishing

With no passengers

In a dream you walk

Each road as though

You were the ghost of that person

Who stood under the sky of that poem

And cried out to God

Or dissolved in dreams, apprenticed

to a different future

so that children gazing out on you bereft

might find comfort regardless of their historical period

And oh moon set sail on so many waters

Still you shine for me as well

Phasing through the well of poetry

Where you are reflected like a multifoliate inscrutable heart

As if you had no possibility

Of ever having only one surface

In this or any other’s dark.

mary angela douglas 4 july 2024

STARLINGS ARISE

 

STARLINGS ARISE

Starlings arise

And shed the blue black night

Becoming more distinct

In early morning light,

The moon like a chalk smudge

Against a silk screened sky

While I have put

Embroidered worries by

To memorize another orchid sunrise.

mary angela douglas 3 july 2024

MY SONG IS A SINGING SILENCE

 

MY SONG IS A SINGING SILENCE

My song is a singing silence

A thunderous non acclaim

A pouring out of rain

On an indifferent desert

Let tree sing anyway with its muted birds

And move with the green wind soundlessly

No need of renown

No need to muse

That the sky of my heart could grow confused.

Sing for the Lord

What else can matter.

We will bow down, the windy plains and I

Under a threatening sky

The small creatures under migrating stars,

make it rain roses

On the uncomprehending.

And raise a small curtain of light

Lest I fade away from seeing

I am not seen.

Song, its own reason for being.

Is for the King.

mary angela douglas 2 july 2024

ONE DAY FROM THIS INTERMITTENT WILDERNESS

 

ONE DAY FROM THIS INTERMITTENT WILDERNESS

One day from this intermittent wilderness

We shall emerge

The rocks we hauled for them yielding honey

The arid nights scented with lilies

The curved bell of sorrow slicing the air no longer

the harsh word turned back at all borders

the nets forever mended in which we were ensnared

oh on a dare you think that I lie that this is fabrication or

that I am a well meaning fool

you don’t yet know the shadow that falls across you now

one day will be ringed with light.

And what has been heavy so heavy for you on earth

Will break into peals of music

That have never known lamentation.

mary angela douglas 2 july 2024