In Just One Week They Said That You Were Dead

[another poem to Valerie Macon, driven out of office but not

out of Poetry*]

in just one week they said that you were dead;

(the self-appointed coroners);

or a dead letter arriving at the post office

they already owned

lock, stock, and barrel as the expression goes.

they could not even rank your insouciance at

daring to accept an honor bestowed,

not demanded.

well,who are the ticket holders anyway?

was asked by some

but not by the press

who marshaled their columns like generals.

and is it expertise that is required wept the moon

in ivory,

reduced to this.

oh all anonymous saints have wept the same

Light.

I do believe

the cognescenti,

(Dante may have said, from his particular Heaven)-

call this: Poetry.

mary angela douglas 1 august 2014

Note on the poem: *To Valerie Macon, recent poet laureate of North Carolina who in one week was so lambasted by the drummed up "outrage" and "uproar" of former poet laureates and others that she resigned.

Are you proud of yourselves, then, my Grandmother would have asked them, her voice like music.

Since she's no longer here, I ask it for her.

And Were You Dreaming In The Licorice Night

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing, And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the ring; But most would use no wing. O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night Before true light, To live in grots and caves, and hate the day Because it shews the way, The way, which from this dead and dark abode Leads up to God, A way where you might tread the sun, and be More bright than he. But as I did their madness so discuss One whisper'd thus, "This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide, But for his bride." Henry Vaughn, The Ring

[again, to Valerie Macon, true poet laureate of North Carolina- on the true nature of the poetic calling, ultimately, as a calling from God

and to Joseph Brodsky, who said at his trial in the USSR (being tried for being a poet and accused for that presumption, "you parasite," they said) while he said, simply, "I thought that was something decided by God."]

Esse Quam Videri*

and were you dreaming in the licorice night that words

like vagrant stars drifted through your window?

and did they settle like snows of your young Decembers

on the covers, setting up their illusory summer camps?

oh yes. and with orangeade on tap and the strawberry swirled; conversant with all the dolls.

and could you see, through the semi-transparent tribunals

of poets, even then,  trying the poets they wouldn't let through their chain-linked honorariums?

oh fences dissolved for you, perhaps, as in the

paintings of the Impressionists and

you were living then in their springtime washed in pink and 

green,who measured time in the colours of the flowers

and the violet shadows flared.  and you were

in love with the licorice night

and thought God made the stars for only you.

and thought that poetry was

the bright, bright ring endowed by Him,

for you, a chosen bride of words, and to you and

you, perhaps, reading this and, aren't we linked

by love alone in the chain of eternal

poets, poetry who were never chained, being loved by God?

and this is pearl scented like the gardenias

in our grandmother's gardens;

like the magnolia bush weeping white linen in a vast 

perfume they cannot pretend to know

who crucify, if only they could,

the glow of flowers they could not have created.

mary angela douglas 20 july 2014;rev. 20 april 2015

*Latin for: To Be Rather Than To Seem, State motto of North Carolina...

The Poets War Against Poetry While The Amateurs Are Comforted

[to Valerie Macon, poet laureate of North Carolina for just six days who resigned on July 17, 2014 because other, former poet laureates and many others in the literary community ganged up on her because she was only a "self-published" poet (at least, it seemed that way to me and to many others)

and who said in her resignation letter to everyone. don't forget to love poetry even if you haven't collected accolades...

and, we won't.  As for those whose scorn for the self-published seems unbounded, if you want to drive the Muse from your own door, attacking a fellow poet, (no matter how lacking in credentials you think they are) like a pack of wild dogs - in broad daylight - should suffice.]

who will He send, the angels of saffron?

this time, the ones of sheer starlight small children

see straight through?

the ones of green linen

soothing the wounds. the wounded.

once again on earth, cried the violet

shadows, poets fight poetry with their inverted shields

their plumes upside down backwards on their horses

running down the unqualified.

plaintive on a lute in a far away time someone strummed

a few notes under the moonlight.  thank God no one heard.

or just a few friends.  and song flowed under the doors, through

the chinks of the windows and was welcomed.

sit down at the table, here is dark bread, our last slice

and spring-cooled butter. jam of the summer strawberries we kept

just for you and you recited for no money at all

the beauty of the day gone by and how the angels tread

on clouds of rose and gold above our worst hour and children
 folded up their

tiny griefs and grasped with both hands the moonlight appearing at the door that never wanted to leave again.

and neither, neither did we.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2014

To Valerie Macon, New Poet Laureate Of North Carolina Or: World Poetry In A Single Bound Vaults Over The Nitpickers

[to Valerie Macon, new poet laureate of North Carolina, "above the fray..." (July 12, 2014-July 17, 2014) a glorious though brief, reign...]

poetry appeared in the bark of old trees,

in the neighborhood you used to live in

springing up overnight, syringa in the moonlight

cloudy cloudy stars.

in the old rains,  intensifying the lilacs.

in the older lanes of perhaps, Fuquay-Varina.

in the little birds hopping near the mystical puddles

in the parking lots.

and "whishing" in the tails of the grey squirrels

and it was curled around the baby's finger

in the butterscotch sunlight and it never asked why, why

has no committee come to call on me

but burbled over the white stones in the creek,

the varicoloured,

in a wavery sound we knew was music laughing

and the angels, brookside laughing

fit-to-be-tied:

"what is protocol?

does it have wings, too?"

mary angela douglas 15 july 2014

Note on the Poem: people (some) are upset that the Governor of north carolina appointed the new poet laureate of North Carolina, skipping the normal protocol.  All I have to say is, thank God, since He's the source of it, anyway! (of poetry, not protocol)