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