I Fell Off the Cliff Of Learning Into The Honied Day

I fell off the cliff of learning
ooooooh the invisible said
what happened to your head

my head is made of valentines I said and sometime violins
not fractions of stale pie gardens of grades gone by
not tea things with wings aspiring to be more

collapsible telescopes ever more
collapsing stars. I'm Alicean in iced blue and pink
I said. I drifted, words drifting from me

turning red.stomping off. yellowING words with a cough.
and poly syllabled, words from the Greek and the replete.
I went to the ball with golden ones simple, in a gown of cherry

simon sampling the entire Fair in love with God not a single
care stuffed into my satchel while

my heart turns green unto the lanes of the fair day living
where no one learns anything apart from apple tarts
the heart already learned in lawn, with clouds

the flowers made of snow heaped up to musing
and soft blue tones, pale things
and lightly fragranced.we shall compose

only knowing the roses.ringed and rosy tinged
I am the earthquake's lid at the tea party tres delicate
lost among the too too brilliant to live

I am a stranger on the cliff of learning
you don't even try to balance someone said weighing opinions
not carefully at all

your last week's assignment sugar bowl full of equations

why should I when it's my kaleidoscope that's
turning and turning from breakfast on, on violet china
the ever more beautiful into a Farther beauty, bouquet.

instead.my head full of violins valentines wistful
can you imagine it
with the olden songs,.at home
amid the mignonette.

mary angela douglas 26 july 2018

I Thought The Dreamers Of Things Had Come

to Stephen Vincent Benet, to Vachel Lindsay

I thought the dreamers of things had come

that the silt of lies had shifted otherwise

the great river had moved on

with ita showboats, its inimitable wrongs

that cadres of angels stalked the banks

that Progress had won.

fools gold so much of it seems now

farm houses blown apart and brothers and the heart

the splintering call to arms

the misery of industry.

the endless quarrels at the end of ropes

the newspaper quandries in the backstreet rooms.

the ghosts. the ghosts.

cool tombs said Sandburg, in the cool, cool tombs.

and still the supplications to Kingdom come.

starry, the folktales I have folded in my heart

American songs oh sprig of lilac mine!

the legend of a blue raspberry colored ox

the Lincoln Portraits the abyss of slave laments

laddered up to Praise!

the garnet wounded ear of God.

little sod houses set before the storms

the silk of prairie grasses in the winds

my lap heaped with buttercups the music

of To A  Wild Rose scrolling.the blowing snows heaped up

before the wild eyed foaming cattle fenced

sad impearlments of the Indian names for moons

crooned over with, and soon..

I wait. and count the till.

I will that these things live.

and won't  pretend all beauty has gone from

appled Appalachia, Ozarks greening,

the Great West still beckoning in  pure mirage.

the robins in the chinaberry trees, the pines- of OZ-

mama cornbread calling us from the back screen door.

still. between the robin's egg blue

the blue jay feather and the milky quartz I knew

I know there is real gold in you.

America of the sweet grasses

of the wagons moving on.

the supplicant willows by the creek beds.

the elegiac trains.

I believe in you.your hallowedness.

I still believe in you.

mary angela douglas 23 july 2018

The Poets Boarding The Ship Relinquish Their Images

to Francis Thompson

we would return to you dear Lord what if,
the images of all things we hoarded
as Keats said, in the realms of gold

that we might free them from the cursed
and lose them no more because, to you
we would return them all only to save them

from the hordes on earth our useless pride.

ah for they are fading anyway in this arrogant day
flowers set in amber to no avail.
the sad, curled ferns.

how may we bring to you our borrowed finery
the clues we left you in the forest that You
might find us anew

so that we can finally go home with light luggage
no longer carrying small stones in our pockets
dreading the trails that disappear without a trace.

to you all things must flee
or else lose liberty, lose the wings
we thought we had made 

you sewed for us in the shade of Eden.

now under a pale and ever a paler moon
we have wept in various guises
setting the invisible looms up for

the invisible costumes
no one will buy.

through the long noons
that withered the grasses
yet, not You, the giver of dews

and rose refreshments. can Wither with the worlds.
from childhood I remember asking You
what does it mean to give you glory

who are glory and my angel whispered
even then
give the thing you love the most to Him

give it back that's all you need to do.
yet it is hard. but harder to resist the truth
all things were made by You, not us

we only borrowed the moon and stars
we even borrowed love
and what can be said of beauty

except it's the hardest to lose and yet we
lose it everyday disappearing into you
whole fields of flowers and those that we have loved.

dropping off suddenly

the edge of continents, all our fears
dissolving through the years.
we ask of you take all our verses too

and winnow them in the Winds.

mary angela douglas 22 july 2018

Chekovian, My Cherry Jubilee

how happy I was on  certain cerise afternoons
reading Chekov's Cherry Orchards endlessly
up to the point the first axe felled...

for me perhaps for you in your Heavenly dacha
watching the lacework clouds
the sound of the axe is stilled

and the cherry orchards bloom
and bloom. I send this note to you
if it may be

your saints would entertain the thought to pass it on
as couriers of song

no matter what happened in Russia later on
at least on your earlier pages the orchards remain.

this is the power of literature
I think.while History's plunging off the brink,
it is still...still

surrendered to blossoms of pink.

mary angela douglas 22 july 2018

My Last Testament To The Jewel Encrusted Skies

to my sister Sharon (again!)

we thought the skies in fairy tales were  jewel encrusted 
and should rain down sequins, crystals, the little pearls
diamonds, emeralds and sapphires squirrled away

by the pirates on a summery shipwrecked day, revealed:
let it all rain down we caused our doll queens to say,
the princesses too

even the ladies in waiting in their puzzling satin
dunce caps
down,down on a discouraged world

heaped up now in glitter in every shade
evading the giant Vacuums.
or at least we made our mark

leaving a trail of glitter on our Grandmother's carpet
in our paper crowns, our wands of faux stars. in pretend evening gowns
(the best kind)

seeking the ribboned candies in the yellow glass jar
that candy Grail on the living room maple table.

our roles in the secret plays we played unheralded,
but that's o.k.
our house the stage

and our backyard.

while the dog played the other parts
with a willing and a fluffy heart
and didn't mind as long as we played with her.

I still think glitter is as good as diamonds.

and rhinestones will do for a coronation or two
in any emergency. also rose taffeta rayon.
and we were the true, the original

glitterati.from the Kingdom of Crayon.
I think that too.
I really do.

mary angela douglas 22 july 2018

Mothlike, Lacunae.. The Poets Gone.

mothlike, lacunae, I dreamed of that pale green shade
the hushed rose scented evenings of a former age
the truth plighted to love

and wrote it all down in a fragmentary way
dipped in silver:

when will the clouds awake let Shelley say
and then the wind comes through
laden with God.

after days I wait.
the burnished emblems sigh
orphaned after Yeats.

and his unmooring verses fly
to vaster worlds, Away!

to whom shall I cry
give notice to the violet skies, the shires,
the torch is gone.

the one they carried for so long
from ministering hand to hand

by God recalled.
men build tinkertoy walls, towers
what they will or may

out of the last few sticks, or clay

to wall it all in.as though this had never been...
to bury them again.
and leave us to technical English.

the minimal parings. the lacklustre kings.
the public shearing of wings.

mary angela douglas 22 july 2018

Dark Ages. Where Is The Stained Glass Moon

perhaps we brushed through the webs of God
carelessly, in our going
leaving the silken shreds behind

the unexpected gold of evenings wounded.
how will we know when golden words are slayed
the picture book of memory fades

the mail of the heart is shattered through.
we wandered through Arden forgetting old names
the pearl of it all discarded

the rains washing all of it away
and then in a time of drought,
not even the rains were singing

not even the birds.of the pale Emperor.

mary angela douglas 22 july 2018

Things As They Are In Our Town, Your Town Too

they're bleeding all colours dry I dreamed
let's go from here before they've dried us all up too
what's left of me or you

I do not like the words they use

the way they use the words I used to love at home
before they got ahold of them and droned
and tamed them down

with a world weary sound resounding
I am sophisticated look at me
what can the child know about mystery, rainbows...

only, they're somehow there for joy, for glee
I would have thought defensively and striking back
that way from my small desk  though wordlessly

if I had an inkling then what was going on there
since then we are ruled by mobs and learn to disguise
our fingerpainted sobs early on.

isn' t that the most that can be known, we're here for joy
and that's the code
not to be dragged by the ear

and made to memorize from year to year the rules colors
really are not there; we only think we see them,
phenomenon,deplaned- over and oversville explained,

trick of the eye exult the masters
it made me cry 

to see the magic drain from it all
under a stern unflinching eye.
I still wake up to the dazzling day,

my rudimentary skies,
feeling that way.
me and my rainbows, packed to go.

mary angela douglas 21 july 2018

I Wonder

I wonder if the angels sit around reading poetry
on their days off
the poetry that no one reads on earth

that no one read.

piling up remaindered in the odd basement, pastorale shed, unheralded.or in the attics, next to the Morris Chair.
of course they don't have days in Heaven

it's all just one golden glare
off the burnished streets
of Everywhere

you might miss moonrise.
perhaps they wait at the Gate
for poems about the moon.

with Yeats, for his purple noons.
it's hard to picture angels sitting.
really, I can't do it.

what about the wings?
maybe a folding chair.
or do the wings fold down.

haha. wing back chairs...

perhaps they read while flying
their attendant breezes turning a page
or do they lose their place that way.

I'd like to know from age to age

and if we're good
will we at least be understood there
for what we meant to say when we had words.

I picture the secret poems in clouds,
that rain publishes on the pavement
so that children splash through rainbows

mirrored. are we the mirrorng ones
after we've gone? catching
what travels There in sound,

in opal waves, from the lost and founds
of half remembered pink afternoons

from Eden's formal gardens, guarded.
from the lisp of children lost in their parades

their lilied dreams
brimming with rhyme schemes.
twirling in their velvet shoes
with the pom-poms.

mary angela douglas 20 july 2018

Angels Pulling Strings

angels pulling strings do not pull rank
they make sweet marionettes dance and sing
they fix the string on the English cracker so that

it explodes mildly in sweet candies fountaining
or unexpected charms oh thank you angel breathed
the child who couldn't get it to work

and was about to cry.
angels do not pull rank.
let me repeat

they'd rather die though dying for them
is a little problematical don't you think.
angels glide

into a room thst some see
as a golden flash in the corner that should be cornered
especially the dog who barks rapturously

in several languages perhaps, who knows
we haven't got the code;he's

waiting for the spectral show to show
by the picture window and the vintage lamp
even if it's only, for him at least, the curly headed

and the circumspect pet, (can you tell
I just wanted to use the word circumspect)

projected in black and white
faint shades of grey shimmering
it's kindness, anyway.

and it is lovely.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2018

Bye. Must fly.

Folk Song For A Prize Winning Age

still meaning what they say the kings of ruth
size up the populations and divine the spoils
not enough toil going on in here in sun or shade

in cubicle glade I hear them early and I hear them late
I look upon my dinner plate and savage the one pea left on it
said the dog

i've got to log in and see the world without sin
because you know its only fair to spare us bad news everywhere
we/ve much to do sawing the population in two

getting their children to dry our eyes
while leaving them out of the Big Surprise
those with manners wont get the prize

but the ones that tear it out of the jaws
of all the dubious rhinestone laws.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2018

Some Things

I heard Satie in the afternoons
the pearl elongated notes of a
vague melancholy

thinking of famous willows I have known
the fronds sweeping the clouds away
from the ponds

then I read Turgenev and wanted a dress of lawn
sweeping the grass, the river grasses with a
sash of pure azure.

some things cannot be
not even in the original
some things are dreamed

like famous willows I have known
the flower wreathed Ophelia
on no tide

human pride, our harps left there
and the rivers rising.

mary angela douglas 17 july 2018

It's The Pink Linen Napkins

it's the pink linen napkins on the pink linen tablecloth
on the drop leaf living room table
we want for our very own doll house

the sweet microcosm
little dabs of elderberry jam
the tiny bone china cups

so rose endowed to go with

who cares if the big dolls do not fit
and will seem monstrous next to their
smaller compatriots

we'll just have apricot tortes
and lemon things

out on the lawn
just like a scene from Henry James
elegantly, under the trees

with the complicated shadows
small finger sandwiches
hot tea still steaming

from Grandmother's silver service
she'll have to put on her eye glasses
to see.

mary angela douglas 17 july 2018

Play Something On The Violin For Rilke

Rilkean birds flew out of my heart
startled by the nearness of the skies.
cloud music I have loved you
with an unseen love
imagining the winds at Duino

and the first gold fissure of
angels floating nigh
the pale green parapets in
dangerous weather, the
Poet almost blown overboard…

who can forget to love
the poet born
to be wounded by roses,
business letters and the unrecorded-
covert sniping glances on
the endless pavements of evening where you walked-

the leaves whirl up as high as the sunset
bouquets left for you by God, alone,
though you're no longer here to gather them.

or ever at home on earth...

children gazing from new windows-
unused to the battlements of high Song-
suddenly-began to dream…

began to notice the teacups rattling on their own-
and the far distances…

as though they were meant to be
strange neighbors
in the same music,

Shining-

mary angela douglas 27-28 february 2012/16 july 2018;10 june 2019

AMERICAN CLEARING

AMERICAN CLEARING

for the great American literary critic, Harold Bloom

I see the poets writing their last songs
and the trains up ahead in an American clearing
and the cottonwoods murmur the poplars planted

long ago, how, how long till they depart
who wrote the wounding of the hearts and the balms too.
feverish in their dreams now and the last winter set

not much time for their regret except
when will the listening world awake
I hear them ask for mercy's sake

you weren't born anyway for commerce.
commence again the latticed page
latticed with remaining light though

the golden age is out of sight
coming or going in the nights
that others knew, before you.

oh watchmen on the fiery towers
pitched long past grief's relentless hours
whisper a word or two for us

who follow you as it's said, to dust,
though not our souls
into the country none on earth has seen.

that we may bloom on other shores
remade in the green of our befores

and take up singing evermore
and learn what all of this was for,
the music and the chiding.

mary angela douglas 15 july 2018

Things Happen

you sew up the tears in your soul
as if it were the Hindenberg
about to explode

but you don't know that yet
you can't.
who ever does.

things happen or they don't.
things occur.
when they occur to you

you wonder how the sky is still blue
and why no one else seems to wonder that too
and you're on a distant shore

while they keep buying groceries
going out their accustomed doors while
your old door floats by you on the flood.

caked in mud.

maybe you'll stand in line.
maybe they'll take their time.
maybe you won't recognize anymore

your own lips moving in the movie
while you try to find your face
stretching to say a rubbery something

for which there is no language really.

mary angela douglas 15 july 2018

Drifting

we sent postcards to all the art colonies in the world

all that summer and in our best handwriting

won't you take us in

we've no more money to spend

writing poems on the back of bills again

we cannot pay

I know a little rose way where there are chapels

made of green leaves

I'll make a reservation

we can stay there

each in our folding chair

in chapels side by side

working on something

the parachute silks to be announced

at the grand setting things aloft

earth is too expensive now.

we'll go and live in the clouds

the ones that kept changing you said

pure opal sighed I or was it then I dreamed

everything is beauitful as it seems

because they can't make up their minds.

to be anything but drifting

mary angela douglas 15 july 2018

When Consciousness Returns

when consciousness returns to the semi precious lands
and we dress in apricot pink sashed again
and eat fresh raspberries on a whim

in little silver bowls on snowy cloths
so that Sunday rings in sugared every week
the New Year and the confetti raining down

we will rejoice with evergreen and spruce
and in the town with the small fresh rolls,
the rosy clouded mountains see

when we read again
of Heidi far from the city

rejoicing with the Grandfather
the skies spangled with stars
and blind Grandmother can hear again

the stories of our only Shepherd and Friend
can feel the trebled chimes of the rising winds
can dream and we dream too

wreathed with flowers
as though we had won everything back again
from time that cryptic Thief

and stood in our fresh petticoats
in the old rooms 
the jeweled kingdoms heaped up

all around us.and shining

mary angela douglas 14 july 2018

Reading The Cloud Signatures

there is a feeling
that comes like rain washed air
like the breath you take in music

half unaware you are
reading the cloud signatures

eternal fun at the fair
the wheel caught

in the wine coloured melting
of the autumnal sun
when you look out from on high

from your parfait perch in the sky
at the pinwheels spinning like mad 
in the hands of sparkling children

before the storm comes in

not granted to everyone
is it to win in this way
is it granted to see delineations

of the milk white sea

the jade green boat
the way the moon floats on ebony waters
when we become like trees 

deeply rooted every breeze translating us
into song. then we have lost the feeling of wrong
discerning the quickness of the hummingbird instant

God is with us,
and among.

mary angela douglas  12  july 2018

Under The Reeded Roads They Passed

under the reeded roads they passed
emblems from the looking glass 
once turned down on the summer page

in pink sands while we played
we were the kings and queens
and Neptune augered, sand fly

screened from harm
but now alas I look around
the fairy tales are leaving town

since there's no sanctuary here.
how hammock breathed the air complied
we had the golden on our side

brides or grooms still to be wed
to a quiet infinity shell lined
scent of lime...

but how bedraggled castles seem

when no one else knows what you mean
when all the seashores ebb away
and none believe a word you say.

mary angela douglas 11 july 2018

I Love The Deam Languages Disappearing Into The Mists

for Janacek, for T.S. Eliot, for Hans Andersen

I love the dream languages disappearing into the mists
I follow them there, my heart in a knot like Psyche's
my lantern I lift aloft

the small birds warble caught as though in an art song
only i hear
where is she going, will she disappear

and though I hear them I cannot delay
but am hastening away
perhaps like the girl in red slippers

in a case of once upon or astronomical high tide
and the cathedral saints chime then as now
so silverly, shivery

askance look. look at the time
and the vanishing point I'm missing
wishing for telephone, strawberry sundae,

Coca Cola dimes when

it's so redeemable, Lady of ashes
queen of the eglantine
and of the rose silences, entwined

where opal words like mermaids
get tangled in the fishing lines

once only only once the dream languages
given to mankind

they are throwing away so carelessly now
for such small change
headfirst into the breakers

from all the with it libraries
and dressing down the old fashioned
who cling to them the lovely fading

and the Cross
that will save will salvage time out of mind
everything beautiful

every thing that was beautiful
in its time.

mary angela douglas 11 july 2018