Walking Was Easier When They Were Here

walking was easier when they were here

the ones who read you stories

who covered you with quilts

and hid the Easter eggs

who taught you etudes

rocked you to sleep with hymns.

whose people are we now I ask my sister in my mind

across the long distance to our pale blue nursery

that they seem visionary, sometimes

coming back with little sandwiches and punch;

adages in your half sleep

for things they forget to tell you: of

how life would be

they shine in their own light now

removed from all these things

but you remember everything everything

especially in catastrophic moments

when the world seeps in and shows its hidden face

and you will walk again.

through more than a rising grace.

mary angela douglas 28 march 2021

Oh No, Not Again

in the fog of dreams at times

there is a golden ladder made

of microns of light 

perhaps someone has anchored it 

like a rooted tree

into the sweet soil after the rains

and tossed the silver hook of it

over the thunderheads

and the clouds, being dream clouds

have been bewitched to stand still

what child commanding the skies

in light blue ways would not want to say

Stay Clouds and have the clouds obey

at any rate, the golden ladder is there

as much as anything can be said to be there

and so you start climbing like Jack did the beanstalk

or one of the saints seeking the Divine ladder of Ascents

you can't tell which; perhaps it is both

and you are in your school dress after school the gingham

one with the sash and really just wanted to ride your

bicycle around the block till you espied the shining ladder

in the backyard and you begin to climb you hope

into the lobby of Fairyland

and then the floppy dog wakes you up.

mary angela douglas 27 march 2021

Famous People

(after the manner of Paul Simon)

I imagine sometimes I am talking with

all the famous people who ever lived

just like a friend, imagine that,

just like a friend

in need of no autograph no evidence of the trial

no road map of the places they had been

needing no smile no awkward hand up

no name to drop or to look up

just a friend

and I would say what is it you intend

you intended after all

or should we read the writing on the wall

did you get to the point

when you wanted to leave the joint

when you wished that you could sail

or even ride the rail

somewhere where no one

wanted a shred of you.

did you long to be buried under the sod;

did you ever cry out to God.

mary angela douglas 25 march 2021

Cartography

long have I poured over sundry maps and strange

detailing the way to take in the old forgotten tales

which way to the crone in the forests whom

you do a good turn for who in turn makes it happen

that the kingdom goes to you for a well answered riddle

men had died for;or been lost at sea

for the pealing bell that echoes that echoes the wishing well

echo location dipped in gold, all the answers falling like snow

for the bread and cheese that can never grow low

the best there is, as rations go

despite months, even years of meandering.

not at any auction would I give them up

the singing kettle or the loving cup

the mound in the grass that will lead into

the fairy chambers, the healing of the World.

mary angela douglas 25 march 2021

Not The Frail Bud Shaken In The Wind

not the frail bud shaken in the wind

the small cloud scattered no one will mend

the sparrow frozen at midnight

nor all our faded once upons

can be unaccounted by You

feeling every tremor in every blade of grass and weeping

keeping it all in your Keeping

until the vicious storms have passed.

mary angela douglas 25 march 2021

Actor

he could play any role, really

anything you could devise

a director's dream

and within that realm a hundred thousand other faces find and seem:

but where is his?

mercurial, genial, remote or rising to a hidden note

dreamy and languid, or what you will filching the peacock emeralds

magisterial in aspect; at rest, thinking over the last inquest

prescient: always living somewhere in between his pirated illusions

and the Greenwich mean

precisely on the mark anticipating all cues

perhaps you have some money he could use?

some trinkets you could afford to "lose" he asks under his breath

under all radar so that you ask yourself in moments of horrible uncertainty intensity

but who is it really in there, keeping all the chintz saucers

spinning per the air and bored with you already you despair

in conversation hearing nothing and yet seeming to so well

his ear like a shell of pearl rehearsing his next self in hell

or heaven what difference does it make

he's anywhere on the take

since he is no one really inside, shuffling the deck a bit circumspect

why he can play that too and rue and remembrance feign and

easily,disdain

never forgetting a name;always in the game

the ultimate strawman of himself

immaculate as a glove of dove grey

well on his way to pulling it off

without a single wave

life as theater so shooting star so not even fare thee well

oh what a phenomenon you are he says to all mirrors coming and going, all butterflies in the grass the same compliments tendered

while I am the ship in the bottle tossed on land;

and then he disappears all business past,

the exits well in hand

of who you thought you knew: and gone is gone again

of all you thought was true

because he always wins folding it all in; fissuring

into which face at what velocity

you haven't a single clue.

Sweet Christ deliver us from the grievous wounds defend us.

mary angela douglas 24 march 2021

1Mary Angela Douglas

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Invincible

they edited the miracles out of the stories

so that the snows of April appeared to the children

only like blank spaces on the canvas between the blurred the moss green trees

so that the pinpoint illumination of a fervent gold in the winter sunlight

had causes on causes and from the sunny painting they

erased the obvious presence of the Sun itself

though I told them how likely was His nativity

given all circumstances were it not for the secret affinities

that they had spiked the finer details which shed more light, true light

upon the subject as my Grandfather would have said

understanding as he did the pristine moment called out from

the longing of the ages;the intrepid rose at twilight in the worst of it

the skies still blooming above the torpedos though we could not see them =but only through a tremulous Christmas faith=

blooming and blooming with invincible stars.

mary angela douglas 21 march 2021

How I Lived For An Alphabet Of Rose

how I lived for an alphabet of rose

the gift of learning more beyond an azure door

of snow skies very close to Christmas.

the stenciled ivory moon

the hope of very soon

to close my eyes and be

another place indeed

verging on the stars.

the summer unfolding of time

gardenia scented rhymes

the lilies on the altar laid

the infinite parade of story land.

the birthday cake at hand

one true wish kept secretly

the playhouse to be found

painted lime and pink

the power to think free and

fleeting as clouds

all on my own

yet still at home

dreaming and dreaming and dreaming.

mary angela doruglas 20 march 2021

Reliving It All

that summer I relived the Caucus Race

the once in the Alice books events and we were given comfits

wrapped in coloured foil but the exchange rate was terrible

we were all young meandering

and an organizing voice from nowhere said now we're all going to run together

and run and run like an invisible conductor of a squawking music

but where I thought so loudly my words almost came out in the open

into little pink balloons and lingered above my head

and got trampled I laughed and said this is not a good idea for short people

no one will see me  (they never do) and I will get stepped on in the grass

who was there to ask suddenly there was in this dream a wonderous transformation

more wished for deeply down than expressed but who cares how it happened;

with little sandwiches of jam and butter suddenly

it happened I ran slightly toward the back of the dream and found myself

in a delicious bookstore, better than caramels in foil quickly finding the section

with the children's books of yesteryear with their charming illustrations

I ran in place while leafing through them and was so happy that i had got out of the stupid race without even

having planned a thing and then I saw children happy as the day who had figured it all out too

who left the trackless track and wandered back and back into the riches

of the heart and mind, into lost time thanks be to God for infinite kindness

for relieving us of blindness

and recovered it irrevocably and all that gipsy music too

and Alice in a frock more rose than blue, a fresh pinafore 

facing a small glass door...

mary angela douglas 16 march 2021

God Is Not A Franchise

God is not a franchise, that men should own Him;

batten down His hatches or tie His shoelaces for Him

out of the impromptu dust

He has fashioned all of us

from an unremitting Heart

when we order Him about

when we think of Him with doubt

when we think that we know best

how can we put Him to the test

who died for us and rose again

who had mended all our sin

into radiance within

surely He is the king over us

and not our slave.

we who are housed or unhoused

the breath of an hour without Him.

mary angela douglas 15 march 2021

In The Green And Gold Of The Afternoons

sifting sunlight through the trees, God Is, mysteriously

the green and gold of the afternoons

where children echoing in their play

become the ghosts of yesterday

in the fairy forests the ones that they have cleared away now

for the subdivisions; and later, the luxury condos

but I remember long division, coming up to the blackboard

solving this and that and how at recess looking back

our school playground still was somewhat in the woods

where we could pick up arrowheads and pretend

at times we were holding down the forts or that we

could while roaming in that way become for a moment

horses faster than the wind or branch off in a solitude

sipping the honey from the honeysuckle vines

as if  we were hummingbirds skimming restive in our dreams

and might dart out, singing the way children do fragmentedly

from the dusty

earth our hearts charged with a different singing then

ruby throated, emerald throated too eluding everything;

washed forever by the evening dews.hearkening to

the blue violet call of the twilight.

mary angela douglas 12 march 2021

The Transforming Word Is Music

(to my mother in honor of the day she went to Heaven)

to say for once, the transforming word

to turn the carriage into pink confection

the dress into bright horses

that's not how it went

perhaps we said when mama changed the stories

from her garden chair

turning the signet ring three times...

and then you are suddenly knee deep in spring

and the azaleas and you are the azalea queen

alright then, if it's a new story...

we will attend till when we breathe

a transfiguring sigh

and then will we comprehend

how every word she spoke

was a garden

and we were the tillers.

mary angela douglas 11 march 2021

Snow Moon Tune

 

for the poet, John Keats

just the sound of it entrances: Snow Moon, in late February

not far from the cusp of Spring we imagine petals falling in profusion from the moon

as we have done in other poems in a contemplative room

snow moon snow moon tipping over like a vase of white iris

I could whisper the litany forever

and imagine a vast cameo in Space

forever eluding definition: that creaminess of light

over the stilled landscape of my dreams

as if I were still fifteen;seeking the moon among the magnolias

I will be lunar too, or cutting paper Words into lace work

to scatter it over the plains from some high altitude

startling lost birds in their too somnolent flight;

enchanted forever with the phrase, most cherished

in some mythological way it chimes on the tongue

like every Once upon...again we come across it that-

that Lantern lit by Whom that cannot be consumed;

so auspiciously named;

the augury of the snowy snow moon.

we resume, all forgotten wonder

as though we could plunder just a smudge of that Silver or

like children their play pretend pirate loot: just scoop

from its ivory bands: without assuming anything,

the quietude of Eternity.

with our proud parents, angels, looking on.

mary angela douglas 28 february 2021