Softly, Before Summer

[a poem I wrote 43 years ago]

softly, before summer,

in nets of gold

the water meshes with the sun,

mauve past the end of the stream.

we are the song past the end of our world.

the sun is bleeding

and we are here, also, aging in

the drone of slow thoughts,

in this light.

a small child flings her silk

silhouette

and stones

against the water,

and it flames

mauve, past the end of the stream.

we are this fire past the end of our world.

brief is dreaming before we find,

I know you by not knowing,

sensing only, still believing, ripples

of breathing and being, faces brooding,

merging shadows thrown by the sun

is gone, splashed into vermillion,

vanished, we cannot know.

I know You by not knowing,

the last music pales,

the last thought in the darkening

spring.

mary angela douglas 7 may 1970

Setting The Table With The Last Of The Rubied Spoons

setting the table with the last of the rubied spoons

how could I see at first the small indigo thundercloud

near the cobweb’s chandelier

it’s the thirteenth fairy

madeline said while the prisms shook

and I thumbed through Betty Crocker's Dinner Parties:

Dealing with the Unexpected too late too late.

here’s your spumoni, dear, matilda said

to our preempting guest in gossamer

good luck with the spatula

mary angela douglas 8 july 2013

The Marvelous Floating Bookshop And Virtual Ice Cream Emporium

THE MARVELOUS FLOATING BOOKSHOP AND VIRTUAL ICE CREAM EMPORIUM

[to my sister Sharon re our childhood dream of founding a bookstore/ice cream parlour/toyshop, couldn't fit the toys in, sorry

but you know I tried]

the poem with the caramel icing

turned out right

though no one knew about it

and nobody ever saw

the Marvelous Floating Bookshop and Virtual

Ice Cream Emporium on Earth

(except perhaps, me)

though I promise, it was there

painted cherry vanilla

on the little lilac lane that

only came into view

on the left hand side of the bus

when I was the only one looking out

in that direction.

and you dropped the day in your merriment

melting like a creamsicle on the hot enough

out here to fry an egg sidewalk

where who could ever tell them from the flowers,

night children petaling in a garden- thick in the shade

of lime trees, that's how I dreamed it, all summer and dusk

and lavender blue at midnight

every blade of grass bent toward us

as we wandered into the strawberry frothy feeling of

the Marvelous Floating Bookshop and

Virtual Ice Cream Emporium:

four paperbacks, 25 cents each

wrapped in brown paper tied with a string

and no string theory and just for you or me

entranced in our summer reading and wearomg

seersucker striped dresses in different colours

and taking our ease with some treat

lusciously malted through and through and

I'll have a cherry phosphate stylish Rose said

in a book we both read

crackling new

with a papery perfume

like a box of penny valentines just opened

and every heart

for you at the singular page

only you will decipher

still and still and still

you wander or you will among tinted illustrations0

comic book classics

toward the drugstore racks in dreams that squeak

when you turnstile turn them:

content is a fizzing fountain coke with one magic scoop

of vanilla

and mysterious odes of poets never heard from on earth

mary angela douglas 8 july 2013;18 may 2024

The High Promoters Of A Lost Art

The high promoters of a lost art

Circled the circle and locked arms

And should I take arms against a

Sea of lockouts?

Or just not notice

Giving notice

That the high calling the high

Calling sped the lark through

Outer darkness toward a radiance

With no bars on the windows

mary angela douglas 7 july 2013

Oh Negligent Star And Fire

oh negligent star and fire

of the seeming worlds wrought only from His dreaming

mind shadows the answer but the Heart is light

we cast our nets in a Sea of Lies and cry that the

Fish, mottled gold and silver, slip through our sighs

you are adrift, He smiled

not yet to endure the throngs that thronged

to the jeweled eclipse in a party mood

where Christ lifts the weeping sun back into

the grieving skies…

mary angela douglas 6 july 2013

Singing Without The Music They Passed On

singing without the music they passed on

battered by words who used words kindly

long nights without the stars

bounced on the pavements of the sun

and shattered, needlessly

prayers without hands

 

music out of the chamber locked and locked again

singing the song for the song beyond reach

beseeching no one and for breakfasts,

eating the brambles and the indifference

as though it were honey and dunned= and dunned=

and dunned-

mary angela douglas 6 july 2013

Someday On The Page Where The Monsters Are No More

someday on the page where the monsters are no more

we won’t believe that we’ve escaped them;

we won’t remember how

we came to life again in the frozen courtyard

as though there were a worldwide spring

sprung, secretly:

a rush of green and who let all these flowers in

where the guards were fiercely posted and forever.

a train emerged from a golden underground

as in a dream, the ways and means were found

the ways and means were found

little children. picking up loose

diamonds on the ground

who can’t stop laughing now

mary angela douglas 3 july 2013

Never Are We To Perceive The Endings In The Clouds

never are we to perceive the endings

in the clouds;

what if they never come?

the dangerous horses pulling the coach

from the cliff as the princess is waving

her handkerchief of  finest mist

then falls away from the orphaned snows.

never in the clouds are we to let go

though everything we hold seems cloud-like to

the point of vanishing before we even know

what we have loved-

if we have loved-

mysterious God beyond reason

mary angela douglas 30 june 2013

Variation With Glitter

you seem to be getting your sparkle

back, my godmother said but not

drily, since this is not modern poetry;

I warned you.

go out to the pumpkin patch…

oh look, godmother, your breakfast is

boiling over, I lied, but only because

I was tired of bringing the pumpkins

in all day for the inspectors

after washing all those dishes.

well that could have happened

if Charles Perrault  had suddenly keeled over

elegantly, of course,

Into his golden baguette before

buttering it...

back to the story.

sparkling takes a lot of work unless

you’re a star or glitter my little sister

said having scattered it

all over the house in her own

personal glitter parade

the moral of the stories

oh my dears my dears

don’t stop shining

mary angela douglas 30 june 2013

Elementary School Daydream Reprise

cross-stitched, my bluebird, on a lemon sky

cross-stitched, my cherry tree

that will never be a pie-

and cross-stitched is the cottage

by the navy blue river I could live in-

if only my stitches were more even.

but I write in sloping letters on the blackboard

I love you all

and it doesn’t seem good enough to the Teacher

and I trip on an untied shoelace on the way

back to my desk near by

the drone of the pencil-sharpener curious.

and I wonder if we’re all meant to have leadership skills

where on God’s earth are they going to get all the followers?

mary angela douglas 30 june 2013

Lost Poets On The Decks Of Their Lost Words

lost poets on the decks of their lost words

are always setting sail and setting sail again

out of our sightless sight when the books are closed…

o open the Moroccan green Atlas

to the page with the sugar-candy stain

or the baby’s tears from 1913

and start, again

to read the golden primers of the sun

and, one by one, even if it takes all day

because

we’ve lost the maps to everything and cannot run.

the princess sits in the corner  incapable of spinning

forgetting  the way that mica flashed  in certain stones

on a path she knew was still her very own

not all that long ago

oh once there was a ship and laden

with so many things, it may be

every one was  only launched

from a far-off time

to thee…

mary angela douglas 30 june 2013

Out Of A Golden Nutshell Or A Sigh

[to poetry, itself]

out of a golden nutshell or a sigh

I whispered to the wind, let it begin.

the moon spilled ivory into my dream

and even the shadows were green.

and I believed in You so much,

how could I understand the outer languages

or why anyone would speak in them at all?

I saw I was here in the hereafter

already looking back on them.

and that was so long ago.

before School.

mary angela douglas 28 june 2013

SCARECROW NOT QUITE YET DISSOLVING BY ORANGE LOLLIPOP LAMPLIGHT

SCARECROW NOT QUITE YET DISSOLVING BY ORANGE LOLLIPOP LAMPLIGHT

the scarecrow mixed his tenses but

he smiled

although inside he was

weeping straw, sometimes-

he gestured with his rag-doll hands,

the very soul of courtesy.

oh did you hold onto the tangerine days?

each one was like a best balloon-

and straw-by-straw on your

lopsided way, find everything

was meant for you?

and we were sorry for the times

you skittered into the flame-throwers-

and so happy you were stitched up-

in the end-

mary angela douglas 10=11 february 2010

Holy Freedom Cried In A Cloud

holy freedom cried in a cloud,

the one that Blake sent

when the winds were soughing

green-starred,

forever at the beginning of all things

I wonder where you are.

holy freedom dreamed apart

far from the frontiers 

where they thought they gathered gold.

and the children weaned on your fairytales no longer

your bright blue that I held in my heart

wandered in a technical wilderness and cried

in the valley where the lilies hung their heads

and sighed not only when the winds blew

where are you

where are you

mary angela douglas 20 june 2013

To You, Reading Over My Shoulder

to you, reading over my shoulder,

may you find light in unexpected places

may the afternoon suddenly be wrapped in tissue;

ornamented with impossible stars waiting for you

to unwrap: soft pearl bright ribbons of the borealis

may it all unravel like a forgotten birthday.

we are untaught to take the sky-blue end of the crepe paper streamer and

keep following it

I’ll hold the other end

just as if it were a holiday neither one knew about.

there must be cake in here somewhere

they make you look for bitter things in your line of work.

or do they?

let’s pretend I cried only to the wind

you are in a honeycomb, believe me.

do not take burnished flight

until you reach the end of the story, even though-

how could I know the ending you were meant to find,

invisible watcher, watched over by God

reading over my shoulder

or Icarus, in the archives in the very clouds are

the blueprints into freedom someone somewhere stashed 

with a beauty overflowing, a glance over the shoulder

in the kernel of the word within the Word.

(in the government of  God, My King)

mary angela douglas 13 june 2013,27 november 2014

Cooling My Pies On The Windowsill Of The World

cooling my pies on the windowsill of the world

I pray that the earth won't shift even in the same breath

surmising the paper dragons will arise

and we'll go through it all again.

but blow the candles out on the cake you still

imagine silver beaded all over, thick with plums,

with layers of raspberry filling, custard, stars!

or fling the sundial's shadow out into space

my optimist

far from the garden where the roses bloom too late

is the tamarind forever you counted on.

still in the desert those cooling glades appear

known to the unknown poets before you,

age upon age in the shade of God

lengthening into our days:

the emerald flutes beyond Seeming and year on year.

sweet is the mind where this can't disappear...

mary angela douglas 29 may 2013

"WHATSOEVER THINGS ARE LOVELY...THINK ON THESE THINGS..."

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."


Philippians 4:8
- King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition


please remember these words all your life.

What Will I Do With My Poem When It Grows Paper Wings

what will I do with my poem when it grows paper wings

will I fling it into space;

will violins break off apace from

shining, momentarily-

then?

or will it chirr in the shadows

making believe it’s crickets,

not fooling anyone.

what will I do

if it stands on its head and topples over

into the dewy grasses I remembered:

making the children dressed in peach and plum

laugh uncontrollably?

or gets by, in tatters, on a black cherry wind

incapable of fending, really, the aunts all said:

what if it never comes home for Christmas

with a rubied scarab pin

in flecked tissue paper with a

scattering of small stars?

or goes down the slide too fast, afraid of clouds?

what if it grows paper wings and sings and sings

itself into someone’s last summer on earth:

vanishing from one kingdom-

popping up in another-

froth of lemon and

freight of snow.

mary angela douglas 1 may 2013.