When You Remember

there are dreamlike moments when the unthinkable happens

time is paused and the glass slipper slips from her hands

who could guess prisms could compound such a shattering so

that there seems to be no blue bird near at hand.

you remember the summer marigold or was it the moon

turned marigold and we sipped apricot nectar, chilled.

practicing all afternoons the piano scales.

time is not paused except in the music, when you play it over

when you reconsider the sound was everywhere.

it fell softly like

snow, composing you.

mary angela douglas 8 january 2020

I Dreamed That Music Faltered

I dreamed that music faltered like a piano in the rain.
a cloudburst, and then, it will not be the same.
and no one's going out there in this weather.

they could at least, close the lid I said at the high window
or thought I did as the rain gushed in.
but no one came.

a staircase floated by derailed from a home.
I know I am alone but I will try I cried
on a rising wind

but I couldn't find the stairs.
where are the angels where is saving grace
what kind of place is this where I feel

like an astronaut drowning in space
and then the clouds cleared. the rain stopped.
a strangeness in the air. not a drop of mercy.

the grand piano wasn't there somehow.
so I went to the bus stop, retracing steps
thinking I was getting somewhere now.

mary angela douglas 8 november 2015

P.S. In my dream there was no music and therefore no mercy. In real life there is both mercy and music, thanks be to God.

Jellybean Poems In A Jar Of Summer Glistened

jellybean poems in a jar of summer glistened.

we scoop them by handfuls and never one by one

splurging on flavors under a strawberry sun

with whipped cream clouds

I added pinkly waiting for summer paperbacks

to come: ordered six weeks ago.

they're here! brown paper wrapped but not for long.

the dog barks by the embroidered divan intuiting fun:

a candyland of summer reading; screen doors shielding, sodas

creaming, deeper lemon shadows on the kitchen walls are dreaming:

banana splits with Hershey's syrup surfeited; fireworks on the lawn;

linen dresses on Sundays, or seersucker striped in pastel hues;

piano pieces in the cool cool house of the cut gardenias...

barefoot dancing down the hall.

when we were small.

mary angela douglas 3 march 2015,14 april 2015

The Nocturne Played As A Child

the cut velvet draping of the evening

the sequined sky

the elegance of God the sprigged trees

is it always april in her mind
on a terrace as quiet
as one jeweled cloud?

she plays the nocturnes simply

on the piano of green breezes

and wears a nosegay of pale pink

and only dresses in rose.

all this was at the beginning of music

the nocturne played as a child

the spinning out of the frosted ballets

in wide skirts like flowers

and this is ours

until the last note fades into the green green

darkness that He made

and where we want to live

mary angela douglas 21 february 2015 

Winged Music Starts Awake In A Clouded Chamber

winged music starts awake in a clouded chamber

at the turning of the rose stair in a dream

we came to life or wished we could and

soared over woods like the clouds we were

when we were small

and all the skies seemed chalk pink

scrawled on His translucent blues

and you wore your new patent shoes

and it wasn't even Sunday!

winged music stayed at home and hid

beneath the polished piano lid

you polished yourself on Saturdays

and then went out to play.

and whether the leaves were falling down

like London bridge without a sound

and whether the sheen of snowfall on the way

caught at your heart 100 x a day

it could never be enough

the music played.

mary angela douglas 13 january 2015

Impressions Of The Death Of Garcia-Lorca: On The Piano Of Pale Green Velvet

["I want to sleep the dream of the apples,

to withdraw from the tumult of cemeteries

I want to sleep the dream of that child

who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas."

-Federico Garcia-Lorca]

a piano piece:

of the child who wanted to cut his heart

on Poetry of the child with the silvery
 voice inlaid as if into jeweled light- then

fretted into diamonds continually; the child

set like a jewel on green velvet, set like a jewel;

like starlight scissored out of the skies by prescient children

for a keepsake.  Mama?  see?

and far away and here (in both Castles), simultaneously

murmurs the child who was cut, who was cut like moonlight

out of nocturnes endlessly and from the matinees.

lamented, pedaled over now in the phrasing there is
  a silence like snow;

far off, like lunar song.

and in the gardens of the kings not so mysteriously

disappearing so that who can recount the wrong

even the roses know and whisper through clouded nights:

there is no more music like this.

and the trees on green velvet sobbing diamonds suddenly

for the breezes too young to know the voice

they will carry now

nunca mas

and the cut carnations in the vases of the Princess

 forming no fit bouquets. all is listless

as the olive winds tossing the fevered ship,

no longer.

mary angela douglas 28 june 2014;rev. 21 april 2015;27 may 2019