This Is A Dream Of Stars He May Have Said In A Dream

(to the memory of my Grandfather handing to us on a summer's day,
star wheels, star maps you could turn to see the summer constellations...or winter, or spring, or fall...)

this is a dream of stars he may have said in a dream
I had recently that I forgot when I woke up
the dream of stars the way they used to be seen

from our backyard?
when someone had that dream before you
and couldn't get out of their head the music of
the spheres, remember?

or was that earlier.
new mists have come to be and they
cloud everything now.

even in the National Geographic

but this is your dream of stars you won't remember
this is what they say to you in fairytales when
you see something rare before you're meant to:

you won't remember this when you awake.
go back to sleep. you're in the house
you used to know my Grandfather smiled

a far away smile when

my Grandmother lullabied and they were
eating ice cream in a midnight kitchen
and we were all laughing.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2015

Reading The Poem All On Her Own In Her Grandfather's Chair

the cream cannot slosh in the strawberries

when you spoon them out.

the almonds on the trout are cut so fine

the rainbowed scales gleam through.

you take small bites. your dress is new

with a pale sash

a paler sheen.

all this is in a dream that you had yesterday

that you're still in

geographies are useless here.

contexts forbidden. pure meaning's hidden

or trellised like a rich vine

like light itself like the wind that blows

the next page forward

and the page after that is Christmas.

tissue guards in sunrise colours

and over the snows

the first intimations of

the Rose.

mary angela dougas 22 february 2015

My Grandfather, King Of The Drugstore Sundaes

[to Milton B. Young (forever)]

vanilla ice cream crowned with chocolate syrup

(and this was in a sunflower kitchen)

my Grandfather served us as if we were

Queens. small queens in high chairs.

we had our own methods.

with the royal spoons you mash and stir until

the vanilla becomes pale chocolate soup

still cold and grainy like thick snow

and Grandfather beams as though

this were his masterpiece of a

Saturday afternoon...

mary angela douglas 12 february 2015

Who's Running These Carnival Shows

[to Robert Frost

and to my Grandfather-]

who's running these carnival shows a

someone wanted to know

who walked through a door marked Poetry

in golden typescript, transom pretty. freshly painted, too.

Oh will it make me smaller? queried Alice

her eyes brand new.

No. only everything you were before you came here.

and what was there before? said another.

some old hardware store that sold odd

carriages, nuts and bolts for the universe

and the farm communities.

Do your duty! said the country.

write it all.

we did on paper airplanes floating through school

halls or in the snow, in angel format

Christmas wild. o child.

don't go there.  anyone can take a name
and put a shingle out though

behind the door are polka dots and clowns.

sad scavengers.

Poetry's in the grasslands running free

where no one needs to know if it's famous;

only God.

who singing's for, and liberty-

when it comes to it.

mary angela douglas 30 july 2014;29 january 2015

Canary Diamonds From The Antiques Roadshow

canary diamonds from the Antiques Roadshow.

I think I may have one of those mused someone's grandmother in her fuzzy bathrobe,

matching bunny slippers.

peacock feathers from the quills of Rilke?

a cherry silk barouche

(and matching horses)

in the attic? under the hatboxes?

the candy coloured palette of Chagall.

under the sink?

in your Grandfather's tool shed with the lawnmower.

they must be somewhere somewhere somewhere

the mariners maps behind the paintings bought from a 5 and 

10 store way back when in the aisle near the Tangee lipsticks

or the ruled tablets, the zinnia Burpee seeds.

pink china from Marie Antoinette,

handpainted by herself.

a basque shawl, red  rose poetry aflame.

and glittering, still,

the stars above Van Gogh's cafe,

the originals, crowed the apprasiers.

we've looked everywhere.

the names of famous ancestors unearthed

and all their diaries glow in faded handwriting

in the tv aftermath, switched off.

we didn't find a thing. it's not so bad.

it's fun to dream of things we almost had.

mary angela douglas 26 july 2014

And Now The Commedia Del'Arte Is Leaving

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“the bruised reed He will not break.”

-The New Testament

to my mother – Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas

 and to my grandparents, Lucy and Milton B. Young

and for Mrs. W.R. (“Addie”) White, my Great-Grandmother whom I remember when she

was 99 and I was 6.

In Memoriam

for the long-ago, lost beauty of the earth.

the glory of the skies.

You know the best part: “for the Love which from our birth-

Over and around us lies…”

\“pluck one string, and a Thousand will ring.

-“Pickin’ On a Harp with a Golden String” (old song)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and now the commedia del’arte is leaving                                 
and packing up the wagon with the scarlet wheels
and I’m behind the tempo in the music                        
and the cotton-candy reels

in mulberry dress socks from grade-school-
in a dress of smocked linen you shouldn’t wear in the rain
unless to water the myriad rosebuds scattered

on the yoke and trailing off mysteriously
in lavish embroidery, pink-starred, into the grass…
ignoring the envious who stare but not the little children

out on their mayflowering spree and
pitching rose petals all the way from the lower grades
to Kingdom Come, and sheared soft marigolds, wildly

on a day- after the day - before the Fair.
“do you have blue ribbon words”
I would have said to any

Peddler on that road-
“or small white-wicker pocket-books
fastened with bunches of life-like cherries?”

for it was a jam=bright day and it seemed possible
to always be reading the Classics twice-over
after the newspaper comics came-and before supper.

communion is over but we’re left dazzled in
polished cotton’s grape-juiced, Sunday seam
(don’t get that all over your dress; it won’t come out)

and now we’ve finished my Grandfather’s golden
scrambled eggs
Grandmother calls “welsh-rarebit”

we think the Easter Bunny invented it.
but we keep it to ourselves
the way children do when they’re sure

they solved the riddle without help
like a shoestring happiness tied.
it’s all in the pronunciation.

“Enunciate,” she says - showing us How.
We Can Now Leave the Table
Having Been Measured For Fullness

By the Grandfather’s Invisible Food-In-Your
Stomach-Level Measuring Machine.
(if you get up too soon he says, “not yet,

you’re only half-full…”)
so we keep asking, “how about now-“
so earnestly, and “now?”, five seconds later-

believing he can see straight through and tell:
“three-quarters full”, he smiles as we fold pink
damask napkins down and skip away…

“Don’t Kill the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg”
she says when she gets tired from teaching us manners,
fairytales and the value of Putting It Back Where You Got

It In the First Place, memorizing the Beatitudes.
after  teaching piano all day.
but she’s in rose taffeta for recitals

or playing Liszt like an angel on a wash-day for my Grandfather
tipped back in his leather chair, tired out from working for the V.A.

for whom she’s washing now all the sorrow out of the house with
pianistic brilliance I cannot explain
and no clothes-pins-A Wash-Day Miracle who could improve on.

how soon the glittering hours give way
to pumpkins  with the wheels coming off  in the gravel.
you know the story yourself, don’t you,

from your own childhood spent looking everywhere for milky quartz
on your own time. not knowing what can be taken and not brought back
while you're away…just in the backyard.

in spring, my mother died
leaving me the cat from Dick Whittington-
mysterious improvisations

for an imaginary piano:
small yet elegant and just for me with pale
roses scrolled on glassy ebony-a mermaid’s music-stand;

pink alabaster, paper-weighted hearts
a dime a dozen at the world’s finest dime-store
and picture hats, for every-day.

all her poems, tied up with blue silk ribbons…
and lilac swayed by the unseen.
letters with fleecy details

bright and clear as summer clouds.
or stained glass Christmas ornamentation
to put all those cathedrals in the shade.

a lasting love.
I would have sent her one more superlative
construction=paper Valentine-bright red and

paper doilied, dolled and gliitered, too,- Heart-
if I had just known when
she was going away…

here’s my too-late, unbridal bouquet-tossed backwards
over the shoulder, away from the withering Sun-
of moss-cooled pale white-

violet  violets from the Arkansas woods
with a few choice gardenias
overwhelmingly perfumed

for the overwhelming sadness of knowing
that there was no amethyst marquee advising:
Another Crystal Ship Has Gone Down.

“My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is”
so what gave them permission
year after failing year

to diagnose her Kingdoms with no reprieve in sight
for they were lovely…
every one, unique as drops of snowlight. I have the letters and the 

soul to prove it.
let the question remain
for those who know how to answer

and not in lame psch-pop-while rifling through the files
they cannot own-
with burdens of their own

I must not judge.
as far as making the soul more accessible
to pounding

(or uniform in texture)
tracking it through the System from childhood on, let’s just say
I’m not the one well-schooled enough to turn it all into pies, 

rolling out
the “well-balanced” dough in the spic-and-span Normative Kitchen
with the requisite cookie cutters close at hand, copper-kettle all 

lined up
icing in colors of the rainbow squeezed out, in the end with the same rosettes:

fantastic! Kudos to the chefs whoever they are.
nor will I walk away or just “move on” impressing
whoever’s watching with my own“stability” in a “crisis”

when the heartbeat of gorgeous
Poetry drops dead on any summer day
for any individual King or Queen too suddenly led away and 

disinherited
from their own simplicity in unending rains-
these are the real and every day occuring crimes against humanity.

visibly sanctioned, oh my God.
oh, but now-
let the blood-orange gladiola sing

though heaped up by God knows who on
the cream-colored Altars and for what reasons-
for her real exit can never be reclaimed.

this paper work’s final.
let Gossip die instead. and not be mourned
by True Believers on a roll all over, dressed in

flowered organza, hats at Eastertime-
and perfect gloves, solicitous and cruel-
anytime that you look up to see them, searching frantically

for the telltale signs in you
they thought they saw in her: pathetic, envious gerbils
stoking the silliest wheels of hell in silk from crown to foot

impeccably finding sickness where there is none-
how did you lose your dignity Christ died for?
leave my soul alone.

un-blessed are you…the murderers of Beauty you gush
you “just adore”…
and unaware that no one listens anymore

when you get up to speak.
May God send you better hobbies!
I dreamed of blizzards for days when she was gone-

but it was still summer, I remember-
when I gathered bittersweet for the table-
trying to make up for the charcoal lentils at supper

{Reading Again, I’m Proud to Say but needing some
Non-stick Cookware, Possibly)
with day-old huckleberry coffee-cake from the grocery

store down the street.
remember the summer they painted it pink and pea-green?
(the store, not the coffee cake)

1960’s architecture…with the space-age arches;
a few same scrubby pines scribbled in on the architect’s Design.
where’s the Tang, drink of astronauts.

everyone thinks their childhood was unique
but who else in the English-speaking world
quoted Tennyson, whenever the dog sneezed,

or the Grandfather-
like my Grandparents did (his sneeze was like a freight
train whistling through enormous echoing caverns

and scared the dog so much-
when she jumped up, it
made her flop-ears bounce and curl anew, almost like Disney’s 

“Dumbo”, momentarily)
we had hopes she’d fly…
if it just happened once at a 45 degree angle, we dreamed-

it could happen even more dramatically than ever
right there in our own living room
automatically cueing  my grandparents, taking turns…

“Blow, bugle, blow-
Set the wild echoes flying…”
until we doubled up with laughter on the Grand Scale

felicitous phrase (the laughter, not the Tennyson)
though I am partial to "now the crimson petal…"
Banner Headline in the Gazette:  Local Dog Flies First Time Ever, 

Beating the Soviets To It
And underneath, in smaller type: new sneeze-propulsion does the trick

And in a sideBar: Unassuming Pooch Makes Good; Talk of Nobel Prize. Dog: "No Comment" 
and now they’re singing all on a summer day

for our best entertainment
“Pickin’ on a Harp with a Golden String…”
“you won’t need your cherry shawl, after all-

once you get up here”
my mother called down new
cherry-pie balconies, all her own-

sweetly breaking into my reveries-
"over there! the green house on Monroe Street, 115,"
Beyond all curb appeal now and

floating mystically high atop
lost Little Rock cummulo-stratus, maybe, cirrus clouds-
they’ve drifted far afield

to hover above my current address, out-of-state
“Can you see the Gazette from there?”
I queried-

“can you see me
in the dear old days beyond recall”?
“right now! it’s coming into view…

run down to the store, honey, and get me some cherry-vanilla,:
4 cones, soft-serve swirled for appetizers"; horse-doovers,
Gramp would say, trying not to laugh at his own joke.

but knowing that Grandmother always will…
“we’re having minute steaks with French dressing.
fruit cocktail for dessert, the kind with extra cherries;

and lima beans. save the gooseberries for your sister and the color pink.
then we can say her dessert was different;

we’ll call it:  ‘gooseberries in a cloud.’”
“I’m wishing her diamond dresses and whole houses strung
with prisms”

“it’s a start,” my Mama said. “but we’ll need pork-chops, too.
have a strawberry tart. or pink-iced cornbread…”
Angels floated down with them after I chose.

“there’s cranberry Trilby by the pailful, so save some
room and let’s be
Merry and talk in Esperanto,” (M-a-r-y, I thought, to make her smile

since we have the same first name and she can almost read my mind.
she’s paring the potatoes backwards
but who cares:

and singing La Traviata, the whole thing
from start to finish,- filling the greenwood
full of hawthorned song. you know, she can.

I would  have flunked out on
Pineapple frappe homework, myself-
that winter in home-ec-

if Grandmother hadn’t stayed up overnight-
and made it for me:
aware of my propensity to Drop Things and mix

up the ingredients horribly encrusting the Double-Boiler
gazing into Space (so crowded with possibilities…)-
thus freeing up my time for the Brontes and E. Bsrrett-

in Chemistry I was excused from experiments entirely-
after a few trial runs.
making it up with essays

thanks to the nuns who loved God-
but wanted to remain on earth a little longer
and not be done-away-with by a 4 ft. ll klutzy non-Catholic.

Day student.dreamy-eyed over the Sacred Heart and far
Too Shy. (says who)
in earlier news…

(“Thank you, Mrs. Young”, the teacher’s note
read that accompanied her dishes home-.
“we thoroughly enjoyed the jeweled fruit

cookies and the pineapple frappe you made for us
yesterday for Angela’s assignment”)
did she have to put it that way, my Grandma said-

reading, like me, the puff-pastry snippiness set between-the-lines-
derailing a pristine thank you note on flowered, scented paper,
perfectly done- put a fork in it.

but how could I not take heart-
despite the C minus  
living as I did in a household

where people were apt to break into
the “jitterbug”
while a capella singing

“Flat-Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy…”
whenever they were even moderately happy
And Right in the Middle of the Living Room

In Front of the Picture Window with the
Drapes Open
and the girl-scouts walking this way, up our street…

so unsuspecting…their sashes chock-full of cooking badges
earned in the wilderness-
“Great-Grandmother, burned the toast again,

letting the preserves boil over on the stove.
But nothing really boils over Here.
She’s out back eating strawberries by the bushel

and we can’t stop her.” Mama laughed
just like before, while vacuuming the clouds.
“how do you think she lived to be 99?

it had to be the strawberries.
not the heavy cream. at least she could crochet.  and ride
horseback anywhere-“ “I’m right here,” said Sweet Adeline

“feeding the chickens “ in a dress that swept the ground, fringed with the Pleiades
we peeked through the sugar glass end of the Panoramic Easter Egg 

to see
the chickens eating strawberries, too. bye to the jelly.
and Addie reviewing her sepia inscribed autograph album-

the one I used to look through on the family bookshelf
because it was sealed with Victorian hands clasping the sweet peas
fervently…

“don’t pack your sweater,
Angela,” Grandmother whispered
“not even your Juliet-cap.  

Bring your books –“
out-guessing my second-guesses
like she used to, and

slipping me a Hershey bar
through the luminous crevices in the ceiling
“have you dusted lately?”

“I didn’t imagine you’d inspect the ceiling.”
“Don’t eat that Hershey Bar all at once – but
Square – by – Square-

it’ll last longer.”
as though I were home from School and 6 years old-
all set for the Mickey Mouse Club on TV at

49 Belmont Drive-
or Shirley Temple Theatre’s
sequined programming shimmering

beyond what the heart could even sigh over-
even in black and white on NBC.
I’m still Unmapped like the Land of Green Ginger.

I day-dreamed over my shredded wheat-the last shred left=munched slowly
“Fools Names and Fools Faces…don’t dawdle over your breakfast”

-“or your Christmas presents.
“and you’re still eating your oatmeal every-day,
aren’t you,

with its little lake of butter and cream
poured nicely from a milk-glass pitcher, hobnailed?
are you practicing? Reading John 14?

I’ve planted mustard-seed for you
Where the cobblestones shine like honeycomb for the Lord
even without sweeping…  

I met Charles Lamb on Friday (your time) and we had raspberry sherbet.
'Be good sweet maid, let those who will be clever.'

(no wonder, I thought; you quoted him so much-
did he say, “life is not a bowl of cherries,” too?’)
(I heard that, Grandmother said rather parenthetically-

-I forgot she could do that-)
“I haven’t seen your home-ec teacher yet-
but then, there are many mansions-

maybe I’ll drop by there with some pineapple frappe…
or pink-lemonade cake I didn’t make from scratch…
N00o, Thank You, Betty Crocker.

we’ve started living in that old house
with the fan-tailed St. Cecilia window.
when the light of God pours through

the chinaberry tree it filters-
(I’ve only “seen” a chinaberry tree in Conrad Aiken)
there’s fine little pools of amethyst and rose

all over everything, even the throw pillows-
the ones we got with the Green Stamps
you pasted in on Saturdays with your sister.

and the dog gets petunia-colored, too,
as she’s heading home like the cows used to-
when we had that dairy and delivered milk

in a surrey - over in Prescott
-to your Grandfather’s chair and
five times fluffier than you’ll remember…

(I’m starting to get sleepy and confused-
like Alice in her Wonderlands - Did we have fluffy cows?)
Does Somebody need a nap…and a Danish wedding cookie or two?

with nothing else to do until we want to-
we’re sipping Coke Floats thickly
through peppermint-striped straws    

and eating pink Divinity by the handfuls.
(“3/4 full, now…”)
“we just  go on from glory to glory…

what did you say? Did I bring you some Lily Fields perfume?
Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out"
she smiled, handing me a package wrapped in a star

or candy-bar silver foil;
as I said, “Thank You, Grandmother.”
“don’t speak with your mouth full, child-

sit up straight“-
so I munched happily still, on
bread and butter pickles, Vienna sausages

and endless Milky Ways- but
as we spoke between the worlds
I saw the deep clouds roiling in,
trying not to worry…we’d all lose touch this soon, again-
“You aren’t sugar, you won’t melt”
(now how did I know that line was next)
I heard her in the next room over
Rummaging in her dresser drawers
“Now where did I put these…”
for gold-wrapped chocolate coins in a
net more golden leftover from some Christmas, years before
and fresh as ever (you try one).
“here, honey, you might need these at least until
your Food Stamps come, to tide you over.
you’ll never guess, the Commedia del’arte just showed up
by the snow-ball bushes in the yard
with Life Magazines!  and all the flowers heaped up,
 leftover from Last Spring-“
“it must be winter now, -  Outside…” I said,
as soft as snow and almost, to myself-
“I knew He’d never let them go-
Now they’ll be beautiful, forever!”
she smiled her most artistic smile and said-                
while through my tears
her sherry earrings sparkled:

“Angela-mia-
that’s Some Story."

mary angela douglas 14-18  april 2012                           

                           

Around The Fairytale's Gemstoned Page

[to my Grandmother, Lucy W. Young, my Grandfather Milton B. Young and to Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, among others...thank you! and thanks are due to God since as a friend once said, "God gives us the fairytales to show us the way home... "(P.S. To my mother too, of course. Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas, who spoke in syllables of strawberry and utter cream all the time. really.), my charming sister too, daughter of music, Sharon)

around the fairytale's gem-stoned page are sun splattered leaves and berries softening the borders ferny angels lightly penciled in beyond the trees that shift like pedaled dreams 

on the dream piano of the pale blue country lined with gold I pray to someday rescue if I can- pure swans down drifts down these elaborate Capitals on every sunset's page the 

swans revert to children and are saved on the one rock left in the water coloured whirlpools of their sea- and I skip backwards to a small green house with spearmint strip-ed 

awnings or a pink- beige brick with picture windows and mimosa trees... you can't fade away along the borders flushed with glaced roses I won't let you- and every time 

i close my eyes the skies are pleated with your swans the ruby candlestick in Beauty's room drips very lime-green wax all over my small table with the circus scenes. maybe 

for childhood's jam-spooned days, alone, they gathered all those startling coronations, words of best green velvet, I don't know how else the carriage came to be cut from the 

creamy rind of citrus afternoons as if with the golden scissors of a King Hans Christian Andersen it's still me wavering in a pink embroidered dress and golden slippers, 

wobbling near the icy angels with their candle spun whispering as they say: rework the hidden brocades now of all lost feelings, places, courtiers, things- in snowy silence 

heaped with silver lilies...shine... I can't break faith with the fairytale task till vaster kingdoms come and my sister's perfect Chopin bubble clears the pink-white-red azaleaed 

fence while the clouds keep billowing out beneath their clothespins the milk makes butter islands in the oatmeal until- the last sweet early peas are sorted satisfactorily 

from the Milky Way and kept in the stoppered bottle on our etagere, the one the colour of ashes of roses... but will they turn to diamonds in the end or chicken pie you may well 

wonder when the curtains close... Grandmother's playing Liebestraum again in her rose taffeta on a rose taffeta staff she turned to diamond music in the end taking my 

Grandfather's arm and heading upward without her pearl opera glasses but with the Psalms all double scored in moonlight... the day winds down like antique toys in soft 

yellow chenille- the jeweled heart sifts in the furnace the tin soldier cannot reach the tabletop... someday I will learn to live expecting better swans and in your name I'll find the 

lemon latitudes so fine of the summers everywhere now- of the hidden mermaids with a sainted love dissolving into foam... 

mary angela douglas 5 april 2011