Small Landscape Done In Crayon

splitting the difference between the blue-green, green-blue crayons

we were paid in lemon drops, strawberry skies.

the pale pink dress for the recital.

living at the edge of vacant lot sunsets

on the corner of the stories told.

and dewdrops on the front lawn

are diamonds we said;

let us gather them fast.

but it was too late.

and now we are colouring the evening sky in salmon.

and the shadows of roses

in gold.

mary angela douglas  6 february 2015

How They Have Forgotten Your Orchid Words

[to poetry when it was called poesy (and was rosy) or:
 some posies for poesy]

how they have forgotten your orchid words

the ones lined in gold.

the mother of pearl.

we get by with the insides of shells.

the fishboned rainbow

left on the platter.

I was in love with your orchid words.

I am not happy at their disappearance;

with the pretenders to the throne

who murder the adjectives of your glories.

your rose-limned stories...

still, in the piles of discarded books

at the modern libraries

I take solace.

opening the page

to your sunset's glow

your bayberry candles Christmas-lit

in the high holy days of Literature.

mary angela douglas 6 february 2015

Homage To The Brothers Limoges

[on learning to read...]

on fine papers perhaps,tiny rosebuds of gold foil

in the borderlands beyond the words-

(we call them margins rapped the teachers,

impatiently illuminating.)

and you, turning the pages, aren't you?

dressed in lavender blue and quite alone.

is there a light from Heaven?

there is.

and a rose spotlight when you rise from your chair to recite

oh this is light this is light I am reading

and not the alphabets, at all

mary angela douglas 6 february 2015

The Reeds On The Outer Banks

the reeds on the outer banks

bend into a coral light

and ferried from sight

are small clouds

on waters dark as ink.

churning the clouds

like a kitchen mixer

churning the waves:

the boat between

the eternities

mary angela douglas 6 february 2015

Pink Peppermint Ice Cream

pink peppermint ice cream

my favorite poem among the ice creams

candied cream pink of the infinitessimal

served at a birthday

there should be no further presents.

you are more than sufficient.

rosy in the dish melting and crunchy

you defy all descriptions of deliciousness.

and then my Grandmother

unveils, under the silver cake lid: the epiphany of

pink lemonade cake...

mary angela douglas 5 february 2015

These Things Happened, Though You Will Not Believe

these things happened, though you will not believe.

but I am not obligated to tell you what didn't happen.

first, the skies turned green.

the lamps went out when the king died.

the valentine remained unopened.

small birds gathered and then disappeared.

also, the leaves.

these things happened, though you will never see

them in the newspaper.

whole kingdoms disappeared under mounds of flowers.

also the devastated.

rains fell sideways.

gems got tangled up in light.

then it was winter.

then it was winter and you cannot conceive

how long it lasted.

and we left what no longer remained.

and the valentine remained unopened.

and the little birds dissolved.

also, their song.

mary angela douglas 4 february 2015

The Library Of One

the library of one

where green leaves shuttled through.

pink clouds.

the shelves reach to starlight

out of sight when all inspectors come.

rose-leaved, the pages turn as

though in a garden-

cinematic to a fault.

and dreamy.

softly the archangels quench all interruption.

for the library of one

who went to work

on the meanest bus

and worked for churls

typing up their manuscripts.

mary angela douglas 4 february 2015

Department Store Christmas Window, 1958

oh christmas window in the downtown area

where the dolls move from side to side carefully

pouring their infinite tea;

dressed in christmas velours! by a doll-sized Tree!

wide eyed, will they never look directly at us?

but then, they might spoil their attire.

their mothers might scold.

who cares, there's snow on the glass;

behind us a sky like cranberries

hand painted and an otherworldly lighting

from somewhere we both feel

(my Grandmother and I)

beauty stricken at the same time

standing before the scenery if not yet, the Play

in the same candlelit hush:

pre-Edison, branching angels

mary angela douglas 3 february 2015

The Music Of Swans

[to Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam...]

(and for my Grandmother, Lucy White Young)

once we knew the music of swans,

the silver scrolled.

standing on tiptoe

you see the rose windows;

you can almost reach them.

you love a gardenia stillness;

it is not distilled.

perfume of ivory.

perfume of the palest green.

once we saw through the orchards

in all the paintings:

did they come to life?

we breathed our words

falling to earth all apple blossom.

or inscribed on the winter air, in crystal.

and in the citrus summers, in-between,

we learned the music of swans

so that afterwards, in the long ages,

someone would not forget them.

mary angela douglas 3 february 2015

Waiting For The Light To Change

waiting for the light to change small things occur to you

and the bees of drizzle gather under your umbrella

walk, flickers the ivoried, don't cross yells the sign in

poinsettia red yes you feel Christmasy instead

of what seems to be the mood of those

waiting for the years in review

but you're just in love with the color guards

with all the traffic green and red punctuation

and the bees of drizzle fly away just

as the light turns to amber;

and the sun comes out in your soul on a winter day

where the blue birds gather their little prisms

from the long ago

and painters gather on the Seine

for one lost lingering impression

perhaps before the hives of gold have hatched

for them

haloed, the honey of their tears

mary angela douglas 3 february 2015

Alice In A Dream Of What Was Melting, Even Then

in dreams we are never sure of the place:

it could be this or another one.

geography dissolves.

and then reappears.

there is a melting of rooms.

then, do they bloom again?

she asked herself on a sunny afternoon

on the very same river but

under a farther sun.

and the clouds float on
the surface of the bowl
and not in the puddles

and the mind is muddled
and do we drift in dreams, do we?
birthday candles in a pinafore pocket...
(just in case you know, they bring a cake-
and with glazed cherries...)

and though it glints like diamonds
the sun on the river; the heart asleep, awake?

you're still out of view in a thin sleeved dress:

though present at the pink occasion
when they tick you off the roll

and late again, for the bus ride home

mary angela douglas 2 february 2015;3 february 2015

She Dreams Of His Death

[to Fanny Brawne and to John Keats...]

it's in the garden or it's in my heart,

his nightingale singing in the mulberry tree;

the orchards beyond remembrance now.

the universe was rich with petals;

the heart is filled with snows.

it's in the garden or its in my heart.

am I the one that knows?

am I the one with the lifted lamp

using light like a knife?

the uncrowned Queen of all this vanishing.

I vanish too but they won't hold me guiltless.

it's in the garden or it's in my heart

my love my love my love

mary angela douglas 2 february 2015

WITH GREAT GRIEF AND PRAYERS TO THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

With Great Grief and Prayers for the Loss of the Archives in the Library in Moscow-
Please Know and Be Comforted There are Libraries in Heaven Where Everything Is Intact and All That Was Previously Destroyed on Earth and All that Never Even Saw the Light of Day Is Eternally Preserved by God and by Christ: In Heaven. You will see your loved words again as well as your loved ones.

NOTHING GOOD PERISHES IN GOD.

Mary Angela Douglas

January 31, 2015

I DREAMED I SAW THE LIBRARIES OF HEAVEN

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."*

-Dante

I dreamed I saw the libraries of Heaven

and many books were there

that never saw the light of day on

earth-

and there were no sentinels at the door:

and in the air, something like flowers

and when you turned the page,

fresh meadows, endless hues-

and in a corner resplendent with light

and no newspapers-

you were reading by heart

and could not die-

mary angela douglas 13 may 2005

[reposted January 31, 2015]

*"and we walked out once more beneath the stars."

from Dante's Inferno, Canto 34 (when the poets emerge from hell)

Learning To Deal With Us As Though We Were Machines

learning to deal with us as though we were machines

takes many years of study, so it seems.

it helps to have a background in the sciences.

learning to throw us over the cliffs

while simulating friendship, home and hearth

whatever we could imagine as the safest place to be

takes much finesse. don't bring a clipboard, smile.

ask personal questions.

whole schools exist and just for this

though they cry: under funded.

we are the underserved at best,

the students who think for ourselves

a little distressed. but they'll fix that, won't they?

they mimic kindness

calling us this.

we, who used to have our own names

before we came here.

mary angela douglas 31 january 2015

I Held Fast To The Cherry Branching Skies

I held fast to the cherry branching skies

even when the earth slipped, the angels

vaulted over the unseen banisters.

they lay on earth dissembled, and starlight

was chipped and I heard the broken glass

of far away sighs that some called music.

all this has passed except for the museums

where long ago springs remain you can see any Sunday

settling down with your coffee and biscotti

they are painted in

sweet greens and blues in a sunlight that

cannot fade in the gardens to which

we can never return, you know,

in the same way.

I have made much of  the cherry branching skies.

staying afloat in this way.

painting over the livid lightening of the storms.

the steaming fissures in the sidewalks.

mary angela douglas 31 january 2015

The Rosy Tea Of The Hibiscus Flower

the rosy tea of the hibiscus flower

was poured out in a dream.

wasn't every Spring a dream then

we were in when radiance streamed

through the dusty windows?

and we found violets as if

for the first time.

I will pour hibscus tea from a rosy teapot

till the day I die

it's poetry, isn't it?

sighed the child.

and I smiled, yes...

mary angela douglas 31 january 2015

Please Accept This Crust Of Bread

"I am the Bread of life..."

Christ

please accept this crust of bread.

may it be buttered with the sun.

with wildflower jam.

washed down with amber tea.

with forgotten happiness.

may it crunch when you bite into it

with the crunch of no more dreamlessness.

when you're hungry.

suddenly in prison

or merely alone in the day-to-day

with the moon behind the clouds

remember this piece of bread.

and be full.

mary angela douglas 30 january 2015

What Would The Pincushion Dream, Hans Andersen?

what would the pincushion dream, Hans Andersen?

to be stabbed with golden pins?

to fall in love with a thimble.

my lady's thimble, made of garnet,

the only one in the kingdom.

or maybe the whole display of thread
at the box store:

the Coats and Clark spectrum

jewel like in array, the rainbow-spooled.

dizzy with colours would the pincushion lose

its balance? would it long to be threaded with light-

to become: oh impossible of all impossibilities

the embroidery of the moon and stars instead?

or mantled like a king with ah!

all the flowers.

mary angela douglas 28 january 2015

Did I Arrive Too Early In My Apple Green

maybe I should have regretted

almost treading on your shadow;

removing one charm from the bracelet of the sun:

the one shaped like a treble clef?

the tiny piano with the hinged lid?

these were my crimes

the winds never whispered through the lilies.

the fir trees.

there was a meeting somewhere.

did I arrive too early in my apple green

confounding the centuries

and steeples with their glitter snow.

it comes down when you shake it.

I should know.

mary angela douglas 28 january 2015

To Lieutenant Columbo,Immortal Detective Of The Nagging Clue

[to the lingering memory of the actor, Peter Falk...]

he never finished one bowl of chili.

ate hot dogs, almost, in the park.

boiled eggs for breakfast pulled out of a raincoat pocket
too early on the scene;

canapes when he was desperate by handfuls

with a rumpled face,sleep=deprived at the galas

couldn't hit a target. start a car.

grew dizzy in the heights, just about fainted in

the OR, couldn't find the exits.

grew seasick on the piers...
couldn't stand the sound of guns.

mostly he swallowed clues and so

sustained life.

a little hunched in a raincoat too small

for him. he made his wrinkled way

in all the neighborhoods so affably confused
(his ruse of all ruses) got

told to have some cake at the back door.

that was on a good day.

they all looked down on him

but he clicked away

ticking his everything off the list
sneezing behind the drawing room curtains or

in his grey horror of a rattletrap car

wending his way where the parking valets

looked askance. but the clue is somewhere,

that's the waltz of the off the subject banter

the one that doesn't fit with the others

like the Detective himself. the one that stands out.
and just when they think it's over and they're off the hook
there he is again, snooping in the shrubbery,

no matter how hard they wished he'd just disappear
but oh dear he's come back
and still on the same tack

having slept again in the same clothes, colloquial of speech,

confidential to a fault, wide eyed,

wafting his drugstore cigars, pacing it out while learning painfully

not to drop the ash absent mindedly in the grand

foyers or in the priceless ashtrays hey but. it's somewhere on the staircase, on the rug

where the dear departed lay slain, in the spring mud

nobody tracked in. who can say?
"Boy, this is some place!" he'd gush in Bel Air
putting them at ease and then:

did it rain on Tuesday?

reenacting it all, absorbed beyond the scene.

wherever it is they don't want you to be

you keep turning up, your head in the hothouse

popping up like an orchid or

with your dog who can't stop barking
(perhaps he's giving you clues in dog language...)
your unpaid bills wadded in one pocket

crammed in with an impossibly small notebook

while we wait to see just

what will trigger the latch and the grand detective spring

at them like a mad jack in the box with

the clue that rankles. the next to the last last question, sir,

one more thing, sir, if you don't mind. the golden ring grasped in the end by the unforgettable detective-
 the actor's inimitable performance

an immortal performance guaranteed to irritate the perps

and astonish us

so that we had infinite fun watching their faces unravel

and the schoolboy, wrap the sum, the flush of victory

sustained far beyond this week's episode...

or anything else on tv everafter.

how we wish in this evening sun that he'd come back from

mystery Heaven for a day with that

"just one more thing" the grand sweep of his hands

frankly, consoling the superior minds who thought

they'd easily outwit him and

then, the play's played out so consummately

and we can't even grasp what we've seen.

he's like the ants at the picnic who carry it all away.

without anyone seeing how it's done.

or that it's even gone.

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015

Note on the poem: I had a "just one more thing, sir" experience with this poem that I could not solve. There was another mysterious quality that Peter Falk embodied in his character Lieutenant Columbo from time to time, a really almost mystical, magical quality of seeming to want to befriend the criminal because he saw in  him something else than the crime . On those occasions I sometimes felt he was (as the character)prolonging the questioning sequences somewhat beyond the point in time when he actually had all the evidence in order to delay dealing the final death blow of the arrest. Or maybe the truth is Columbo had no friends being so single -mindedly obsessed with clues that didn't fit except in the moments leading up to the arrests!

This intensified the way the actors played off of each other in an often very touching way.

The most supreme example of this (as it was reflected in the response of the actor portraying the criminal)was in the episode with the very fine actor Ricardo Montalban as a Spanish matador who presented in the final scene his cape and his sword to Columbo in such a profound way it was incredible, as if acknowledging Columbo himself as a kind of matador pf the truth, but there are many other examples where a lot more is going on than a simple plot line.

As fine as the scripts were this kind of thing could not be written into the script. It all lay in the interpretation and the interpretive power of the actor and the exquisitely humanly vivid interpretations of Peter Falk seemed to draw out unseen dimensions of the well known actors playing the scenes with him.

This goes beyond acting I think into some immortal arena or pantheon that ultimately is indescribable, and that is the just one more thing, sir I cannot get into my poem and so I mention it here. And this is also why I was not surprised that Wim Wenders chose Peter Falk to briefly portray an angel come down to earth in one of his films. An angel with a twinkle in his eye who appreciates good coffee and has divine and human secrets he keeps well.

It is said that Peter Falk worked hard at investing his character with even many of his own personal qualities and quirks, even background. I think it would be hard if not impossible to find another character created by an actor with so much attention to detail, that is, in the parlance of artists, with love.

For anyone interested he wrote an autobiography "Just One More Thing" still available at abebooks.com or possibly Amazon. (or in your library perhaps) It came out in 2006 just 5 years before he passed away.

Oh Ghosts Of My Music, When Will We Depart

oh ghosts of my music

when will we depart

I will not leave without you.

here on the old rolls the census of your notes

has been taken. they will not hold you.

the composers in plaster of paris mold

the days into a kind of snow in my Grandmother's studio.

and everything is made vast.

oh may bright feelings last

perhaps you prayed

over the etudes your contemporaries

cast aside.

weeping into these transcriptions

as if they were your griefs, made .manifest.

and I have heard your violins, your pianos

the flowering glissandos and the harp's

descrescendo in order to outlast these deserts

under your invisible palms.

mirage-like you are not.

more solid than their schemes

who live to banish you.

as if they could

who breathed Heaven into our exile

as if you were a Heart

and chartered the countries where we

joy, apart.

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015

The Playhouse Dreamed: The One With Tuliped Curtains

the tulips on cream curtains glow

in brilliant red, in purple, orange

convincing you you're in Holland

and perhaps you know Van Gogh

and are kind to him

and he paints in your backyard

which somehow is enormous.

and this is where the clouds stand still

in fantastic swirls of blue

the air vibrates around the poplars

longing for the entire spectrum

and the stars grow so huge

that Yellow drips from the moon.

you fix coffee for him and bread

with cheese, a little toasted.

he paints the pear trees as if

it were the last Spring

for the Universe.

as if the earth were his bride.

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015

Sonatina In Rose

to live in a house with rose patterned wall papers

overlooking a rose garden

and when it snows, the roses merely sparkle

not forgetting to bloom.

to drift from rose room to room

as if you were fine perfume.

the venetian blinds are pink.

the tablecloths pale green.

you play the piano and then it seems

that music blooms and remembers your name.

how when the rose gold of familiar clouds shifts

over the trees

will you explain to the neighbors

to the angels at their ease

the tint of your windows.

or how will you even care

who live, a rose, among roses

anywhere you dream this.

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015

A Far Away Feeling At The Birthday Party

[a true story...]

a far away feeling at the birthday party

and you remember something from the long ago

yet, how can you? you're only ten years old.

the cake seems meant for someone else.

the raspberry ice from some other season.

you feel beyond all rhymes and cannot reason it out

you only feel:

surveying the table as if from soft distances:

are these presents

wrapped in pink and blue with their contrasting

curled ribbons really meant for you?

and there's a strangeness like an invisible guest

who says to you suddenly but in your own language:

but who are you? you wonder, suddenly apart.

and the sun leaves rings on all the furniture.

the children's voices

still like larks but

in a garden someone before you knew

are just beside you in their party dress and festive too but

you're in a larger room...

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015

I Saw The Amazing Skies With Their Very Own Watercolours

I saw the amazing skies with their very own water colours

shine and I felt the shine inside of them the pearl decked clouds

the feeling of music in me

drift, do not drift away I yearned but could not say.

and this was childhood.

they do not teach us this and think we are little because we are

amazed at the

skies and pearled within; they think of us as shells

and require of us school.

and yet without being taught we loved beauty, the high winds;

the little breezes in the rose garden.

and felt we could say things to the stars.

mary angela douglas 25 january 2015