THE IMPERIAL LIGHT OF THOMAS ALVA EDISON

 

the imperial light of Thomas Alva Edison encouraged our minds

and made us happy to learn about science early in grade school

so that later the Wizard of Menlo Park became at sleepy times

the Wonderful Wizard of Oz

except that the technicolor on black and white teevee

blurred our understanding for awhile

that a million and one experimental failures

coloured it all in emerald green the shamrock colour too

be more than lucky in what you do, try hard

our parents, our grandparents urged

the light of the heart will help you

stand in a green light then oh child and

then in an imagined pink one

for George Washington's cherry tree

just about to bloom when he chopped it down

well we knew the story of Lincoln trudging for miles

through the heavy snows and cold

to borrow just one book from a neighbor

to be read by firelight back home in the log cabin

beautifully illustrated

George Washington Carver who gave us the blessing of

peanut butter (with jam) on our sandwiches

for sure we loved him for it

and some or all of this comprises the storybook land

of the lives of heroes fictional or real

written for us in special children's biographies

so that we would also be inspired

To Do Great Things in the space age

and be hired by Wonder

our readers full of flatboats and the winds

of Grace, the hardships of the human race

Fulton's folly and all things jolly

and the beautiful jinns of fable, the flickering twinkle

lights about the fir and balsam on winter silent nights

or classroom chrismed with the construction paper chains

we glued and looped ourselves garlanding our small tree

day before Christmas vacation classroom butter cookies

such a spree, in shapes of the star, the bell trimmed

with silver beads

or we were fitted with angels wings and taught to sing

God's glory for it all and page by page enthralling!

the cranberry skeins of the skies. out on the blizzarding

prairies we surmised and the plains before our eyes arose

the hoedowns and the johnny cakes sustained

I will of this muddled, medlied happy world a poem make

I said and taking the syrup down from an ancient shelf

I breathed in the maple sugar of it all

and lived, as Ray Bradbury said, as I always will,

Forever. You do the same.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2022;22 february 2023

LAND AND TITLE AND DEED (FINAL DRAFT)

 

beautiful are the lands that do not alter

holding aloft one short candle in the eclipse

I could say more about this

reading the chart for failing starry blips,

and never believing it

because the heart, my heart, is still living

as individual beauty hits a wall

and things are so drearily averaged

into the one and all

but individual sorrow says it all

distinctly, without saying

anything the papers ever sold before

while less than rhapsodic angels hold the

door

while they patrol and I lament

following my own bent

the inner republics, geographies breaking apart

there is no diagnosis in the ark

last on the floods from land

floating in the dark

and something whispers, I've seen this before

the singular inward continental drift

from the blank, collective shore

only by inner light outlast the day

the mercenaries sought what God had never wrought

to take it all away

my soul, my soul.

be very brave.

mary angela douglas 17 september 2022;18 september 2022;22 february 2023

SUDDENLY TURNING IN THE BALLET

 

we will dress in rose colours we thought

when we grow older in prints of more intricate,

delicate design, with lace tatted collars

or I don't know

an opaline sense of time

of timing in the music

of the concertos where glasslike

we dwell between movements

and the charming chime

of the angelabras at Christmas

I have mentioned many times

in other poems I know

not being able to recover

from the beauty of snow

of snowing of all the tenses of snow

in which I long to speak but in a way

in which there is no vanishing;

no need for piano transcriptions

of the vanished.

mary angela douglas 16 september;18 september 2022

THE POINT OF ALL THIS STUDY

 

riders may read what they may read

charging the sun on invisible steeds

riders may read.

riders may read behind the lines

facing the Enemy time past time

falling away but only to rise

only to rise...

long were the years

when we could see

all worlds before us as we read

nearer and nearer and half past dead

dodging our fears in clouded scenea

still in our visions green as green

more like the Dream we read to Dream

till in the Brighter light we see

Christ incarnate in word and deed;

read in his Face, Eternity.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2022;23 february 2023

RISING NOT TO THE OCCASION OF THE KING SPENT DAY

rising not to the occasion of the king spent day

forgive us, Father, that we stumble on our way

over so much gold in the soul of everything

You have made

and utter dark proclamations.

what have we done

with the regal nights

that you have offered us in the purple of your stars

bleeding beauty by beauty from a vaster twilight

than we can comprehend who end

what you would only begin

oh why take flight from Divine love

so duly articulated;not to feel at all

so that the bells cry out, cathedral stung

and peal with desolation?

who can defend us now

at the borders of the ruined countries

of our hearts

who call light dark,and marr the universe

of your sighs and borrow not what you would more than lend

but only steal

and do not, do not make amends.

mary angela douglas 14 september 2022;23 february 2023

THE MIRACLE STILL OCCURS

 

maybe it's time to go beyond this hour of snow

prolonged it seems a season of woe

into the new fledged Spring

held down to a violet whispering

a hint of rouge in the sky

a surge of who knows why

the miracle still occurs

when the long night turns to pearl.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022

ON THE ILLUSTRIOUS ILLUSTRATOR ARTHUR RACKHAM

 

as if he dipped his brush in mist

how else could he accomplish this rendering

of moonlight and shadows

on the page before you

fresh still from the unacknowledged realms

where he dwelled seemingly

two places or more

at the same time

entering by a door held upon by querulous elves

in a refinement unexcelled

who else

could bring such vagaries to watercoloured light

the wake of the wind and the Princess in flight

in a twilight seeming

more acute than dreaming

ghostlike but clear as the clearest stream

rendering the thing you yearned for

in earliest childhood,the visual language for it

recalling long forgotten years

in the very same colors

that have disappeared.

but there, on the fern breathed page

the imprint still remains.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022;23 february 2023

THE GOLD HAS BEEN SIFTED, THE SAND REMAINS

 

in the old fairy tales in the best

translations with the rose and the lily

the phoenix embossed covers

with the woodcuts or something by Rackham

who turned any lock to that elusive kingdom

inside out

so easily as if he made the master key from

the winds invisible or from the Dream

formidable

Dore to Dante, so elegantly tempetuously

portrayed or to Cervantes the ways through

the tangled woods toward Infinite Light

the quests of Arthur laid to rest

the disenchanted Knight and his squire

the early or late interventions disabling

the Dreamers

well, in those books you will find

a something refined and inexplicably edited

out, sifted out gold to our detriment

of the modern versions as if the moon

were clipped from the skies, the clouds

turned silvery, the Rose from the dessicated 

Heart, the emeralds from Oz

that is the warning elliptical as it may seem

to the attentive and lucidly dreaming reader:

it's not the nightingale of artifice you want

the trees pruned back as though they were

never in blossom

when you are facing death or death in life

but the real one

yet

so men cried with Christ on the cross to

Pilate's slippery question

whom shall I release to you then:

oh no. not Him.

give us Barabbas.

or as Hans Andersen said

we have been made to drink sand

from a teacup, and call it good.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022;27 february 2023

GREEN BEANS

in the grand Museums far from very far

shreds of gold are softly

flaking off

the icons and the stars

and certain planets

not yet born

in the grandiose Museums

Spring on the avenues

all the trees are flowering

my bills are past due

but I can go

on mild days or through snow

to see brilliant paintings from

the very long ago

in a gallery of dreams

even if I have to

just eat green beans.

I know the tides will turn

toward everything beautiful

I ever learned.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2022;27 february 2023

EASIER TOWARD THE END

 

maybe falling asleep is easier toward the end

just like a cloud upon the wind

when raindrops scatter spectrums

falling asleep may not be hard

golden ladders in the yard unroll

and softly steps the sole of the Soul from

rung to apple blossomed rung

whispered the child is this how its sung

fairytale peal to peal

forgetting what is real or what was

widely thought to be so

letting go like the sun leaves the sky

whenever the moon is standing by

in the ultimate snow, relinquishing

the need to feel,the need to be

here, what was thought to be, alive.

looking Eternity in the eye

new blossoming.

mary angela douglas 4 september 2022;27 february 2023

WHEN THE BRIGHT RED LEAVES RAINED DOWN

scribbled on small pieces of cloud

that the magpie brought us

when she was so inclined

or when we had enough sweet mercury dimes

to purchase the paperbacks so sublime

in grade school

maybe we found the directions to the Castle

or looked through our half blown

swirly rainbow bubbles backyard breeze ferried

clear through to the next town over

you know as they say the town that time forgot

or I am caught in several stories at once

with the notes on index cards for easy reference

how wonderful when homework turned out to be

a soliloquy on nancy drew mysteries

a golden prowl at the Alcott orchards

golden apples shaken down.

the weather when it was sere

in Jane Eyre year to year.

I bless the life of the mind

extended into overtime from childhood on

into lustrous stories berry ripe 

frost tipped with the dreaming about them

with alternate endings

when the bright red leaves from october's trees,

rained down.

mary angela douglas 4 september 2022;27 february 2023

INTO THE CHERRY DALES

for what tumbles over

into the cherry dales

spilling its silver pail

and must be righted again

sending its colours into a summer spinning sky

or flares, if it is at sea

its please remember me

for what falls off the edge

and slips into the flowered hedge 

or the music box made out of lead

measuring the unsequined hours

captive in the fairytale towers

for what exists beyond all whys

I cast my nets of gold  of fugitive enterprise

that Beauty may be free from lies. but not

from cherishing.

mary angela douglas 4 september 2022

THE WAY IT HAPPENED IN THE PICTURE BOOK

 

farther into the music it will start to snow

for the lost children in the fairytale

you know,

hand in fragile hand under veering moonlight

holding each other up as though they could

sip the moon from a silver cup in the dubious Wood

and enchant the birds.

conjure the birds to show them where to go sojourn

in deeper music ever deepening snow oh

who will guide them now, their feckless angels?

or is their doom sealed shut

or is their small print case on vast appeal

I dare not ask of anyone yet but, oh, I try to feel

one day unwavering Spring will emerge

when there will be no more dirges left on earth.

mary angela douglas 3 september 2022;27 february 2023

OCTOBER'S FAIRS ARE WHIRLING IN THE DARK

october's Fairs are whirling in the dark

snapdragon colours firework sped

crown all the parks and we feel wistful

one by one as if our dreaming days were done

then God touches the leaves with golden arpeggios

and we are overcome;

the moon is lined in cream.

and when it rains it's autumn rain descends

and the earth gives forth a scent

redolent and fairylike as in the former days

past Time and memory's moss, grazed with the stillness

where we wandered

seeking no one's praise but His

who made the  october earth to be like this

a colour wheel fizzing in the cooling dark

and all the children in love with dusk,

the blue, the deep raspberry shadows.

mary angela douglas 3 september 2022;27 february 2023

THE MUSIC BEARING US ON

did we sing where everything was perishing

where night winds diminished in a different key and the white lilies

where the stars bloomed too

expiring with the dew

and the novas fell to earth invisibly

or its facsimile

in papier mache

amidst the other school projects

due the next day

at the science fairs, at the school plays

or mentioned nervously

in the oral book reports on books we chose

before the last bell arrived

the last bells...the summer rose

then we sang and it was December

and the carols lit the candles at home

and the Tree was up and festooned

bright with pear shaped bulbs in tulip colours

with multiple reflections in the icicles we flung

in colors of the borealis or stained glass in all the colours

I remember the words and the music, the feeling of singing

cresting the bright waves of music in our nativities

silver bells tucked amid the holly

silver bells rang out from the winter edged clouds

the way our childhood speaking, sparkling made clouds in the winter

air

then in all the aprils

or in graduation mays

still the feeling of the white flowers heaped

upon the revolving stage

and we were perishing in our sleep

without knowing 

were we perishing

or only vanishing line by line

our souls all along a distant chime

into the eternities with each note relinquished

floating the boat of music

going into the dream time

song after song,with those we loved

the music, bearing us on.

mary angela douglas 2 september 2022;27 february 2023

THE FABLE REPRISED (REVISED)

and to Hans Christian Andersen...

 

I sing of the fabled nightingale in the fable of the fable

of the day before

light entered the picture

light entered the picture and colours were born

and each note was a colour and a lantern we held up

to illumine the bruised shadows. to say beyond what can be

said:

are you weary?

I sing of the nightingale in the last fable of the world

though how could it know its candor was a prelude

to the shifting of all dreams, reality, exquisitely

the little children sucking on sugar candies

all murmurings in the bruised shadows are

language falling apart oh my heart my heart

still it sang of a coolness reprieved

and anguish paused for an instant and listened

and the heart in its cove listened

it sang in the white rosed gardens

under the Emperor's window

where the shade was drawn

against all starlight

and each star was a tear behind a lilac cloud

a child crayoned in on a lilac wind

and each lilac was a cloud come to fruition

and I caught the lilacs in the parting night

and Spring at its onset and yet not a bridal bouquet was

the end of all worlds or one world

where the white roses have come to me unfolding petal by petal

their prophetic sadness with no more reasons to resume

then suddenly the ancient faults shifted

then suddenly the ancient wave arose

uprearing its curling blues and greens

its jade shadows on the foretelling ink blocks

music like this was never composed

rose upon rose in the deepening darkness

the nightingale song arose at the point of death

into the zenith of everything

Holy God for a moment closed His eyes

and I saw it all in the final mirrors

and heard the Nightingale's cry

and all colors descended into their blind goodbyes

and all dreams were shut up like a most elaborate fan

all the clamouring.

and singing infinite singing echoed on-

in the Borderlands.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2022;27 february 2023

THERE IS A PLANETARIUM IN MY HEAD

(to my Grandfather, Milton B. Young)

there is a planetarium in my head

where stars in their tinfoil whirr overhead

and I am a tiny queen of the stage props

devised to emulate the sun and the moon;

if I blur my eyes to a state of dream

all the star wheels can be seen

for Spring and Summer and

the Winter Constellations

the subtle maps of Autumn I withhold from this poem

so that I may remain on earth a little more gold and secretly

and all this is a kind of birth recurring

like the paper revolving charts

our Grandfather brought home for us one day

to my sister and I as though he were handing us

the universe one summer

with his mysterious smile

his fervent adoration of the Space Program

so I turn my inner skies

so many years later

in charge somewhat

of my own theater and surmise 

or know outright, if I am patient for awhile

as God was patient in His "Let There Be Light"

as compared with my subordinate clause of

"let there be twinkliness"

all the stars will come clear

and all the light years.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2022;27 february 2023

WELL, ALREADY

why should we live waiting for the days to end

why not pretend you are already immortal

well, your soul is.

it takes the strain off

suddenly you are feather light

you could be snow

you could even be the skies

the rustle of angels

going by

the birds from early lullabies

the ensign of the Rose perennial

and divine.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2022;28 february 2023

FOR MY SISTER SHARON IN HER MUSICAL DISPLAYS (REPOSTED)

 

I wonder if we'll be on the other side of music one day
ushered in with pink programmes
or you will swing on the gate of it

as you did before, roller skating
in preludes, wading through scales., Scarlatti
geranium coloured.

will the notes sound like crystals

falling;will we still admire the azaleas?
will Grandmother spell out tone poems
while we listen to small records

of the great composers;
remember, when we're away

the reticence of Beethoven

how he was charged with Light
after the rains, the wind shaking the leaves free of raindrops.

will the sheet music be scattered through the rose garden
because we left the windows open

or glimpsed in the pink nightlight

short songs on the page, arranged.
our faces in cameo infant profile;the toy pianos at rest
and then, the nocturnes.the almond trees somewhere,

blossoming.

on the other side of the world.

it seems so distant now
the way we dreamed it then:
both hands on the keys

the gardenias, scented through the back screen door

now we are carried each on such a wave
through portals on a ship that wasn't there before

we never booked passage on.
you said in your sleep a baby corsage!
I know you must have in your rabbiting dreams

with the guardian angels and the metronome;

this is Heaven

this is home where
music goes on and Mama sings our birthdays
rose light through the curtains in the afternoons.

may it always be.and near the pines.
after a dry season
you will lift the piano lid

like a sunrise.
and small bouquets will arrive
for the recital.

mary angela douglas 14 january 2020

 

IN A PRELUDE INDICATING THE WHOLE BALLET

dedicated with great respect and admiration and in all their generations to Maxim D. and Karen Lasser Shrayer...

beautiful, on the lake of my dreams float the swans

innumerably

in a light that is hushed and jeweled:

crystal precipitate!

in a prelude that indicates the whole ballet

I too that is my soul each night would alight

or on enameled afternoons, flashpoints of Beauty,

to thread through death the ferrier warnings in even one 

shimmering thread;

to perfect such floating seclusion

whatever epoch we are stranded in.

how can there be sin

in a world where the swan appears, the swans

as from Tuonela or Hans Andersen, Pavlova,

mythically, waiting for the great bells to ring

out of their legends into our entranced hearing,

seeing, feeling.

I too have sounded my griefs in the foreign ballets

awash in wonder beyond all fearing,

beyond any country known or unknown

and where will I come home

to say whatever it means

this fine iridescence, this pearled thunder

mirage forever pealing wherever seen

in the hall of memories or of dreams, in the public garden

for a day tripped Space

or in all of Art if only to pray

in the merest trace upon strange waters:

now you will drift

after long tribulations. sifting the mysterious.

and in the plumage of the freed.

mary angela douglas 30 august 2022

OLD COINS I HAVE FOUND BENEATH THE RUINS

 

old coins I have found beneath the ruins

old coins not to save perhaps to spend

on finding the memory of God again

old coins like tears I could not shed

for the living or the dead

though each one shines a sunset tear

a single century or a year

near the aqueduct half washed in the seas

the sea of Time that's ebbing from me.

they shine with a familiar shine

they bear an inscription half Divine

oh where will I spend them

what will they buy

now that the night is drawing nigh

old coins I have found and wept to see

an odd inscription of love for me

a song half flung from Calvary

a patina formed by the years from home

a rose gold sigh on a foreign wind.

mary angela douglas 30 august 2022

TRANSPOSITIONS

can these lilies be transposed

I asked my grandmother in a waking dream

in between the seams of childhood in a twilight light

light purple it is or later we called it lavender

once we knew the word, the words and the colour of

lavender blue and that little song

I wished I had asked her about that music

the way she looked at it how it lodged in her soul

about music for the pianoforte she seemed to know everything

everything is music I could say I would have said then

or sung in a roundelay

and I did feel without saying it the lilies could be transposed

why not as flowers should have that capability

drifting on the waters of Monet or Debussy perhaps

memorial

leaning toward the sun or under the moon looking different

perfuming the air with silver for as long as the dream time runs.

her Liebestraum.

her hands, christening the keys.

making my Grandfather weep.

mary angela douglas 29 august 2022;28 february 2023

NOR EVER OF DREAMING BE DISABUSED (REVISED)

 

so what if they scatter our flotillas of light

with their little pink birthday candles

on aome other shore they will be dawning

beyond the masquerades, the predictable awnings

we will find the unshaped gardens again

the wild rose music and our pure hearted friends

the beautiful fields of what has been;

who owns the light

serenade it to the lunch time crowds

when you haven't even a quarter for eclairs

whisper to God what they won't permit or bear

to heck with their glares

the night bird sings

the moon in rings is haloed still

call it what you will, a retrograde star

the need to seek the very Far From Here

since childhood. really

to disappear in a Christmas mood

where there isn't any other news

only raspberries and fresh cream

nor ever of dreaming be disabused.

mary angela douglas 29 august 2022;28 february 2023

NAMING THE SORROW THAT HAS NO NAME

 

gold is the moment then the moment

turns grey

cloud after cloud must I assay

when light is gone

faith carries on

pale is the morning

and the morning doesn't change

the sky distressed

and the blue diamond rain

pours into the streets

with a dreamless refrain

but faith and the music

somehow remain

naming the sorrow

that has no name.

mary angela douglas 29 august 2022

I DREAMED OF ENGLAND RETURNED TO HERSELF (EPITHALAMIUM)

for the English poets, for holy poetry 

I dreamed of England returned to herself
and the bitter knights' reconciliations;
Albion, coming clear in the mists

and the cherry carol branching
and ah, the Dream of the Rood
in jeweled bloom.

I will leap up to God my God
and see the angels rustling in the trees
where once the poet William Blake

fell to his knees and understood
that poetry is certain good
illuminating praise.

the sea of faith is verging in the dark
the ghost poet soldiers mark their place
and turn again homeward in His grace

to the place they loved
the lanes all blossom filled
the lovely strand...

and all their words
are like a field revued

renewed by High Command

with madrigals strewn..

and not excised

la vita nuova, enterprise

from which we dare not turn our eyea

in this high noon in this high noon
where the ancient wounds
burst into birdsong, flower
into the bridal tunes

irrevocably-seeking the Falconer and his gyre

where all had slept as the dew on the briar

forgetting Beauty, neglecting the heart's communion

mary angela douglas 17 june 2017;28 august 2022