The Flight Of The Libraries

(for Ray Bradbury)

if you came back today, a week from now, say

some golden morning before the dandelion fluff wears off

with the Sun still making taffied Light in the arboretums:

would you watch with us who await in the white dawn

the improbable sorrowful flight of the libraries?

for we need the apple comfort of all you meant in order to bear

this lift off of all the rarities. the secret files and piles on piles of

discarded classics no longer branded "relevant." my heart is rent;

they scoff in the May air

at anything I have to say of the fairest of the fair but I'm telling you that I was

there when it happened.

I dreamt a dream one day I stood on the crest the farthest crest

in town and saw them lifting off the ground like pirate ships

with a vast treasure, whirling and swirling like in a water tank

an experiment gone wrong from Mr. Wizard to show the children how tornados form

there they were bricks and mortar with their worlds on worlds soaring a little awkwardly

rickety above the fairgrounds

rackety by the abandoned railroad tracks the smokestacks

recalled by Heaven since no one used them for books anymore just for multipurpose

anything else though once they gleamed from shelf to shelf

like Great Grandma's sugar bowl when Maeterlinck's Sugar personified dropped by it makes me want to

cry;Goodbye to the books the ghosts of Chistmas last; we all got strange looks asking for

Robinson Crusoe just last Tuesday for Heidi with her flower wreathed goats

soon they will be gone mere motes in the sunlight we shall be bees no longer making honey;

like some of the characters in your stories

we shall have to rely on memory alone

remembering how it felt to let the lilacs go

when the snows came and the ice witch poems.

mary angela douglas 6 may 2021

To Wim Wenders On His Angelic Images

let the guardians fall from the skies

as tender as snow feathers the angels

looking after humankind

and find in the whisper of a prayer

in the blueberry picking dreams of the children

the key to beginning again

let the winds sway Edenward

in a pale green listening

and the child lost in snow

recover the light

relieved of snow blindness

and half dream of those who study as if it were a vow

confined to libraries and to a distant quest

take another breath

those about to jump from bridges

take a step back

or fall into the arms of the angels reduced to

human perplexity and fresh coffee

counting the rays of the sun in base two

in primary colours in secret distress, delight

radioing in the beauty and fragility

the tragedy the infinite redemption

of those still on earth.

mary angela douglas 9 february 2021

N.D.E.s And The Immortal Book At Hand

(I was) near death, they say
and all their tunnels glowing;
the silver overpasses of the angels...

and now, no longer do they fear death:
a moment's spume washed up on the
deck of eternities; back to their home making

with alacrity; no longer that commited to
washing the car every Saturday.

but I am still here not having made that journey
where a commanding angel commands, go back,
you have something left to do-

trembling over a multitude of old books
discarded from contemporary libraries
having the scent of gold apples procured

from far regions

or childhood's delicious, snowy bindings.
and I want to know I want to live
without categories

or catalogues or testimonies...
deeper and deeper to live
beyond mere life, near life

within these majestical phrases
that have been tossed out like so much rubble
into a modern alley.

or book sale-bake-sale salad
with the proceeds going to the astonishing
other things libraries are known for now.

while language is crowned with ever novel
diminishments, so as to be, also near death.
except that, how can I tell you this, that

God breathes on the vintage pages
as I read.
and He did then, as well

when they were writ-envoys to us their latter friends
so how in this case does death, near death
even enter into it?

mary angela douglas 9 novemer 2015