And It's The Juniper Tale, Again In The Quilted Weather

and it's the juniper tale

and it's the pearl cloud over the moon

in dark rose weather

and you cannot sleep under your thousand covers

because of all the colours

and the fragrant stew -your best receipt-

made from wildflowers and who

will account for this accoutancy

the willow wisp over the marsh grasses

and it's all evergreen at noon and

icicle music when you turn
on the dark blue pea under the mattresses.

you need a few things to lessen your hunger

so you bite the juniper tale in two

and they won't ask for a sequel or measure

where your footprints wet with sleet went

as if they cared

they wouldn't fool small animals

foraging in the Easter grass or perhaps-

the Easter baskets a little taken

with the violet bow,

pale purple violets under the snow

and your best premonition

more than halfway through

this juniper tale for you

or whoever finds it first
shining chocolate in gold foil

mary angela douglas 19 april 2014

Note on Poem: You may think I mean will o' wisp and that I mispelled it but I didn't.  I just changed key from folktale to a wisp of the willow song in Shakespeare in Othello as this is a hard scrabble poem and yet with a hint of the desperately, even more long-ago lyrical recalled in extreme circumstances.  But if by sound association you would rather it be will o'wisp, feel free to think it is and it will be.

American Folkloric And Pink As The Prairie, Stars

pink prairie stars and near to the sloping blue

how long will you linger

after the wagons roll

how long.

catching the glow of

your mysterious pastels

I do remember

wishing for a house of sod

built out of the sloping blue

out of the sloping blue and God.

the cornflowered air.

and long can I linger

how long inured

to the wheel tracks on my back

the Conestoga furies

the swamp grass gas

in every hue and fretting the faery fires

for my sweet Mary.

downstream from Heaven

the grave of old settlers

barely remembered

near the sloping blue...

mary angela douglas 19 april 2014

Note on the Poem:  I have made a kind of American

settler ghost-poem and coloured it a pink prairie sky-colour

(and a sloping blue of the hills infered).

The Many Coloured Bear At Rest In A Variegated Light

[to Mr. Perry Cordill in praise of his painting, 'Papa Bear']

a popsicle bear shrilled the little girl

blue raspberry! where he slurped it in the grass 

while reveling in the sun smiled her mother

(that must have been after the children dropped them

as they'd run)

or soaked to his bear bones in the tangerine rains that come

half butterscotch half butter rum said the miner

a little shyly

in the coldest creamiest Spring we've ever had

or flat dead-center in the Northern Lights

a rainbow sherbet bear the little girl breathed reverently

coming close to it

still shaggy, for all that resplendence thought

her thoughtful maiden aunt with sensible shoes

and cherries on her hat

a Kodiak bear at large in the paint store in a western town

at the foot of gold mountains

with blueberry yogurt on his muzzle

a sunrise bear it just can't be sunset

or this is how he feels at the height of summer

all rainbow stippled, matted with orange blossom honey

or lumbering through Forever the God of

all rainbows at his heels

driving him farther into total Bear Happiness

into berry crowded thickets.

in a lingering spectrum

fantastical

mary angela douglas 19 april 2014

Corina In Her Red Shoes

corina in her red shoes leaves scuff marks on the stars.

corina in polished red patent in a white summer dress

painted by the painter.

corina in her red shoes, indoors when it snows

sparkles like rubies, doesn't need to know

if there is really music anymore,

a book of fairytales open to the page

she loves the best and more tumbling

from the shelves and in a green dress

with cabbage roses

she is princess for awhile

in cotillions of her smile.

corina tap dancing down the avenue

for several carrots and a few odd apples

strangely patent red at the market

don't you tell.  my golden delicious.

corina in new springy shoes

with the strawberry satin straps

was seen on Sunday, shod in pink velvet, velvet shoon

and floating tune by tune with God

in a magenta wide brimmed hat in a lemon sundress

what do you think of that?

mary angela douglas 18 april 2014

I Don't Think God Wants To Be An Ideology

I don't think God wants to be an ideology;

I could be wrong.

perhaps He wants to be a song

the multi-coloured riptide

underneath it all

the supra-golden hull

floating on the baby bubbled air

the thin ice we're accused of

skating on

(just to be near us in the everywhere)

or fresh baked bread.

a creel of star works, nimble

Engineer of dreams  that, then You may

fall into,,,everything! You made

some lapsed  summer berry crowned afternoon

or start the snows and feel the crystals

flitter round You at the center

cold as ice cream.  colder.

the wise the merry and the tender.

kaleidoscope molding Denizen,

shifting the stained glass as it shatters

so my wounds are fewer than they

might have been without You murmured our soldiers at the end.

oh without You what would anything matter-

the pull of swans that patch the winter skies

when they are broken.

the raindrop splatter, camouflage of tears

and years and years of Spring.

the carriage dazzling us home again

where we grow petaled...dear Diamond
at the center we can't see
without going blind.

 oh, I know what we'll be THEN
said children thinking they made it all up themselves:

(endlessly and endlessly, Perfume)-

the King's own roses

mary angela douglas 18 april 2014;rev. 16 november 2014

Meditaton On The Ark At Rest

[partially inspired by the Peter Weir film, The Last Wave]

champagne coloured, for awhile, the clouds disperse;

a universe has set and still you are not sure

you see what you have seen,

the dream-time rumbles and the tinted windows dream

they have escaped the floods and children garbed

like angels skip their breakfast on the morning of.

a universe has set and still you do not understand

the gold flecked ticking wanes above the azure.

you'll worry for the little things and stay awake

for things you have no name for-

while, even then, the high winds rise and the floor buckles.

drenched in the colours of the not-been-born yet,

will we awake to find the hail has not destroyed the view

and we were held within Your summer ark

brittle as we were-

the ancient nightmares through?

mary angela douglas 18 april 2014

The Embroidered Pavements Of Mr. Chung Jik Woo

"The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You."

-Jesus

["Walk on through the wind/ walk on through the rain/though your dreams be tossed and blown...

from You'll Never Walk Alone song from the musical "Carousel" by Rodgers and Hammerstein]

he said it is His april and the peach petaled wind

will cast your dreams before you as you walk;

you must keep walking

though the sky thunders and the private soldiers languish

that it may be whatever may be still

 the april of your dreams

or smile in the mirrors where the wars rage on

and scatter the ship of winds so that petals form the mast

and soon at last at last the kingdom that you dream oh

who oh who will wrest from your hand

it is the beautiful soon he cried, all autumn

where he stood, let the red leaves fall

and wishing start though your heart is cut

when the private soldiers scheme and

nothing is won but everything is dreamed

and you walk on

mary angela douglas 17 april 2014

WE PRAY WITH ALL OF OUR HEARTS IN THE NAME OF HOLY GOD AND OF HIS CHRIST FOR THE PEACE AND SAFETY OF THE BELOVED PEOPLE OF UKRAINE AND RUSSIA INCLUDING ALL NATIONALITIES AND FAITHS.

ESPECIALLY DURING THIS COMING HOLY WEEK OF EASTER WHEN EASTER FALLS ON THE SAME DAY THIS YEAR FOR BOTH WESTERN CHRISTIANITY AND ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY.

THE PEACE OF GOD WHICH PASSES ALL UNDERSTANDING BE WITH YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS IN CHRIST JESUS.
YOU ARE LOVED OF GOD. MAY GOD BLESS AND KEEP ALL THE PEOPLE IN HIS CARE. AND THOSE CHRISTIANS WHO WANT TO HURT JEWISH PEOPLE MAY GOD FORGIVE YOU; YOU ARE NOT CHRISTIAN.  JESUS WAS JEWISH OR DID YOU FORGET?

IN JESUS NAME-

AMEN

Midnight Blue Tea Set From An Undetermined Dynasty

golden cranes weeping on a tea set of midnight blue

when weeping is flight away from and not to

and mother of pearl detail on a screen of 

purpling fantastic lament;

the selfsame century.

or maybe not. a silk-screened contract.

the poppy opulent fan.

what am I bid for the tea rose scents of a dilemma;

for the carnation silks of the trepidation when you watched at some dawning distance from events

the auction of the bride cast down by the casters

and forecasters; it's the bride cut out from the

seed pearl morning by a child: the seed pearl morning

and the poem

of the far-off intuited disaster.

it's the lift of the golden cranes forever 

from a field of midnight blue on the trace of

the day you were born for;

and oh it's mine, it's mine, the repudiating star-

what am I bid.

and who will pour tea now for the ceremony

coming down around your head, your head

with its pearl thoughts braided and burnished

and burnished and banished 

from an ancient village that can't welcome you

when you catch your golden breath instead

of the hem brocaded on the terraces of grief.

your golden breath that was always going to be

going from not to

that was going to beat against the midnight blue

against  the midnight blue and win-

and the seed pearl illusions' shattering

someone

else, instead, from an indeterminate dynasty.

and fortune is yours still and the carrying case;

the mirror with its opal backed splendor'

the soul in its mother of pearl intractability 

of intricate detail

and the auction is not through-

it's not through yet and yet you are living

and in a little while the bidding will finish.

the bidding will finish on a fairer isle than this.

mary angela douglas 13 april 2014;rev. 16 november 2014

The Baby Mobile As Impossibly The Pattern Of The Heavens

a simple solar system over the baby cradle swung

and flecked with laughter, glinting in the blue

of no clouds ever, diffused a prismed light on

Sundays in the afternoons and on the lemon floor. 

the simple solar system, sung in many colours, hummed-

all night and the moon looked through a little envious;

said the moon in golden letters, "soon, what wanders here is the high celestial

brought to earth you dreaming child,

making up your earliest remembrances."

here, (they may remember later on) slept a child of music-

as if on rose leaves, as a rose may and

batting the simple solar system

with a sigh, a sigh of the barely beginning ruffling

the leaves of the beginning of the angels and

before the abc's.

mary angela douglas 11 april 2014

To The Moonbyrd, Wandering

we will leave amethyst candies by the night porch

and further, if we may, beyond the moon-splashed grasses

stray for the moonbyrd who has flown high now

and lo! above the rose gardens,

gated in our sleep.

mystic mystic moonbyrd

pecking the peridot leaves off the trees

oh why have you gone

dressed up in chalks against the

purple impenetrable

backdrop, masquerade of our own summer night?

you will be lured by our candies anyhow, back to

your cage of light oh

moonbyrd, cousin of firebirds, trailing pure

rubied escapades, feathering the dream skies

or emerald sonorities, someone

else would have said.

I don't know them.

don't eat all the candy candy

sang someone's little brother

it's the bait but I said

it will be snowing candies, soon,

for the moonbyrd, don't you think?

in the prevailing winds

and it is nightfall and we miss the measured moonbyrd's 

blink of ancient rainbows, slowly revealed and we sing

old railroad songs and listen faintly

for the angel choirs who must know where you are,

echoing you back oh listen hard for

the particoloured shrieking of the gleaming moonbyrd

we stayed up late for, as if you were Christmas

we want you to

come home and live in our room.

cease foraging for meteors

by the coloured chalks scattered on

the floor and we will sing to you,

if we can, the sweet night through

and feed you the candies of pure goodness

truth and beauty.

drift in and out of sleep,

my wonder.

only you are free.

chalked in and out of sight not once demystified

we'll tread the angel lit hallways

back to sleep not tracking the mud

from the rosebeds, ever. dreaming,

my wonder, you are free

mary angela douglas 6-7 april 2014

Note on the Poem: I wrote this poem just minutes after seeing a lovely Academy Award (1959) cartoon

entitled "The Moonbird" (and then revised it seven times, you stubborn moonbyrd poem! And I am spelling it this way, the wrong way you maybe said but that I think is how the moonbyrd would spell it or the children, at least, in my poem who looked for it.  Call it a

variation if you want to, (variant?) spelling.  who knows.

Selling Garcia-Lorca

"...a las cinco de la tarde..."

-Federico Garcia-Lorca

selling Garcia-Lorca

I walked to the edge of

the olive-groved sea

and wept into it.

citrusly the stars shone down

on the next-to-the-last moon

in its lemon yellow binding.

selling Garcia-Lorca -  all-

all the deep

grass-shadowed singing

with the fabulous flowers

opening to the same green page...

I try to forget I had to barter you

(bilingual edition)

serenely complete in a world of inquisitions.

and now, es que yo no estoy completa,

la sombra beatifica lo sabe*

I cannot ransom you.

they paid me 41.20 in the bookstore

for the entire works of Garcia Lorca

enough for bus-fare home but

I spent 40 dollars, pure

oro de mi corazon

in another lifetime;

skipping lunch forever

(well, I would have)

purchasing sweet words

unfiltered, cerise as pomegranates.

silver, under the gnarled trees, I say goodbye

to you now precisely

where you were bordering

my mind-

oh-

infinite brocade...

now like Rachel 

I cannot be consoled

and the lemon moon strives with me

only because I cannot ransom you

with tears either silver or gold-

though they, like poetry, are legion...

mary angela douglas 22 august 2009;rev. 2 april 2014

**but I am not complete and the beatific shadow knows it

(first draft, Spanish translation of first version of poem)

La Venta de Garcia-Lorca

"...a las cinco de la tarde..."

-Federico Garcia-Lorca

en la venta de Garcia-Lorca

me acerque a la orilla

 del mar de olivares

y llore en el.

estrellas citricos brillaba

en la siguiente a la ultima luna

en su enlace amarillo limon

en la venta de garcia-lorca todo,

todo lo profundo

hierba de sombras cantando

con las flores fabulosas de apertura

de la pagina misma verde...

trato de olvidar que teni que trueque,

edicion bilingue,

completa en un mundo de incompletas

y ahora es que yo no estoy completa

la sombra beatifica lo sabe

y yo no puedo rescatarle

que pagaron 1.20 en la libreria

para las obras completas de Garcia-Lorca

suficiente para el hogar billete de autobus pero

pague 40 dolares en otra vida

sin el almuerzo en muchas

ocasiones para comprar palabras sin filtro

y crezas como la granada.

plata, en las aceitunes,

me depido de usted en el que estuvimos

a mi mente

ahora como rachel yo no puedo ser consolado

y no se puede rescatar que a pesar de que

con lagrimas, como la poesia, son legion

mary angela douglas translation completed 29 june 2011

The Queen At Sunset Addresses The Glass Jewels

the glass jewels shine as lucently

assented the Queen in winter daylight,

under chandeliers of the arctic suns

and I have lost the keys to everything

but the kingdom that is mine.

they will not know that I am queen

of only the things I can remember.

the glass jewels shine in the shadows I

have left- no one will mind

and there is money now for cakes, small 

strawberries off the violet vines

that shift their colour at sunset

the glass jewels shine as if they were garnet

and the dew on the frozen grass is still alive

and I am alive and queen of nothing

but fair diamonds in far distant skies

mary angela douglas 1 april 2014

The Wind Has Caught The Tattered Rainbow Sail

[to the true God, to the true Christ and to those with the courage now-to know the difference]

the wind has caught the tattered rainbow sail

and you are over it now.

the interlopers banished,

left to build their nightmare realms

all on their own;

how will they manage

is anyone's guess.

oh let them keep their teacups full of sand

for someone else and let their roasted apples char

in the witless castle fires we tended without sleep.

and witness now, the true doves flown.

ah let the fairytale clock rewind the puerile darkening

of the golden days that lay before you

on a long ago afternoon waylaid.

oh God my God will recompense the jeweled time

splintered from a green beginning when

they declaimed the dreams

we already owned

as if they birthed them,

crazed pickpockets of the heart, cruel

harbingers of unparalleled sadness.

leave them there to rustle:

blank pages in Your book of living air

mary angela douglas 31 march 2014

The Rose Recitals Seen In Retrospect

the rose recitals seen in retrospect

keep their bloom irregardless: at first,

uncertainty at the piano; then launching into

musical suspension of all else and it's the

pianoforte now the plunging into 

evanescent waters wreathed in flower sounds of a

childhood's sweetheart semblances and

the coloured rippling through the room

no longer a room, an opening onto space

excused from school

and laved in the roselights now and green

and green as the twinings round a measureless rest

yet the rockinghorse made of stars won't stop

as we have galloped away or lapsed into

beauty at the rose recital and they will not

call us back from the printed programme atmosphere,

not ever; from lime sherbet punch served up on an april

porch as I'm wearing the pink rosebud dress with the satin 

sash of immeasureless poetry and a wrist corsage
 of curtseys to the disappearing

room and all the rest is altered by the 

coolness of carnation skies

when we're, dismissed-
but not, from school!

mary angela douglas 20 march 2014

Doll Riddle No. 1

if little white roses

in a doll-size snowed under garden

came up anyway

who would notice

mary angela douglas 26 march 2014

Brightness Is Brighter

[to e.e. cummings]

brightness is brighter

gold on gold ever gathered

falling out of creases in the clouds

beckoning from the quartz glints

unexpected, on crummy sidewalks

flung flower filled through twilight skies,

not penny-pinched, the seldom truly glimpsed,

wildflowered out the windows of the proud

and drawing room banned; of little note

between raindrop and raindrop

pierrots weeping into the sequined suns

whenever sommersaulted nothing's won-

still, musical without the audition-

muddled, opal-puddled

it goes on gardenia-gleaming

in a basement atelier

sweet columbine dear o dear blues spinning tulle graced

into God's best guessing games

there is light there is light

sang the child in early spring's

white violet arias delight!

forgetting the scales oh not the halos,

brightness is lighter than all aureoles,

orioles in the auroras

tangerine sectioned out of sight

you can carry it in the corner of

your corners, in any disguise

cloud shaped piano

drifting, dreaming through the droning:

multicoloured, even after Christmas incandescence

tulip bulbed and icicle fretting and I have loved Your

multifoiled winds their infinite snowing

invisibly valentined reprieves

of the non-descript days

crowned queen of the

maybe something lavish will happen...

who can say,between the holidays

rose-trellising the drizzle.

you can ferry it no matter who

they think you are in the day-to-day,

clandestine, marveling in the thought of it;

cramped in dim corners but otherwise,

cherishing the faintest ray

you're that regally ragtag

though they shove you

out of their way.

whatever else you're lacking

even with no packing on each

dress white eviction day-

pearl punctuated, bride ghosted

brightness goes with you

mere dragons dare not slay

mary angela douglas 26 march 2014

Note on Poem: cloud shaped piano - this is the second time I found a way to allude to that wonderful image in Chekov's The Seagull referencing the writer writing down eachthing he sees without respite including a cloud shaped like a piano...

Be Not Afraid Sing The Christmas Angels

be not afraid sing the Christmas angels every 

day you are alive and the everlasting pavements

won't give way

under your feet the chasms will be bridged

though you can't see be not afraid

though we were made to feel this way

whenever the dark rolls in

the dark rolls in and covers your heart

but your heart is light with Christ within

and scars your soul

but your soul is whole

whenever the Christmas angels fill your mind

oh rest and peace and do not fear to live

life beyond breath survives

and paved with stars

and paved with stars

though war and war's sick aftermaths

seem destined to go on and on

and you no longer feel what's left to

lose or win-

it's only God who gathers His children in

mary angela douglas 25 march 2014