WHO CAN SAY WHERE

 

WHO CAN SAY WHERE

On the snow blind page

Anything could appear

The scrawl of bird flight

From many years

Their interrupted songs

Snow scars in the sky

Cathedral colours in the flume of the heart

Arising;It could suddenly be that the trees appear

With the wind rushing through them

The deliciousness of that

Of pure feast after a musicless fast

The sounds of a golden language tumbling in the air

Like the leaves let go from the trees where the wind is rushing

Is rushing like time in dreams

Who can say where

mary angela douglas 10 march 2024

AND THE BIRDS SING NO MORE

 

AND THE BIRDS SING NO MORE

 

Many flags have flown

On the good ship last resort

Feelings we have owned

Then traded away

I will not trade out my God

Though I sail not

Though all things fall away

Though the water recedes

And all is dry land

And the trees lose their root systems

And the birds the birds sing no more

Still it is God that I implore.

mary angela douglas 9 march 2024

 

I WILL PAINT WHITE WORDS ON SNOW

 

I WILL PAINT WHITE WORDS ON SNOW

I will paint white words on snow

Hiding my heart’s secrets

Leaving no trace of anguish

Let tears come and go

Let what flows flow not

Into the rivers of antipathy

Let bitterness dissolve

Let it be no fit savory

Let the braid of tears

Be braided with rosepetals, violets

From earliest years.

And sadness be annulled.

Mary angela douglas 9 march 2024

SCRAPBAG

 

 

SCRAPBAG

For Emily Dickinson

One chirp floated down from a dismal tree

Winter soul I am, it felt like Spring to me.

One cloud rainbow hued suddenly arrived

For a thousand years to come in memory

Shall abide.

Though only once the sun appear

Or halcyon day be done

One scrap of bright infinity,

For me, all bells have rung.

mary angela douglas 9 march 2024

THE END IS COMING LIKE A SUNSET END

 

THE END IS COMING LIKE A SUNSET END

The end is coming like a sunset end

But the sunset has sunrise to begin again

This is how like a child I think of the end of days

Or my days

Of all the labyrhynthine ways, the mysteries

Alpha and omega to me

Spring has its winter

Winter has its Spring

And we though we appear ephemeral

Were not made to disappear

Its written in the stars my friends light year to light year

For us, for us there is no end.

And all the vanishing Beautiful whispers it’s so.

like the songs of snow.

We shall be renewed.

mary angela douglas 9 march 2024

OLD BOOKS

OLD BOOKS

Ghosts of the alphabets linger here

Wherever crates of old books appear

Relegated to bin and landfill

Frontpiece and tissue torn apart

Emblems of old fashioned hearts

How will we face Heaven’s judge

Who judged them so

Beauty not of a present time

Why would I banish you from my mind

Why would I think your voice is stilled

When all your pictures my heart still fill

The antique phrase, the chivalrous knight

The maiden in her maiden flight

Dante and Shakespeare and sweet Rosetti

Now  they would make of you only confetti

Wall street ticker from up on high

But I will live with you till I die.

mary angela douglas 8 march 2024 

WHEN WE STOOD IN THE BRANCHING SUN

 

WHEN WE STOOD IN THE BRANCHING SUN

When we stood in the branching sun

We did not know our race had begun

We did not know

Lifting the shadows from the hill

You were with us even still

When in the evening we could not stand.

Time has measured such a span

From then till now

Though we falter, fall and cry

Like wounded birds from terrestrial skies

The flight of the soul is undeterred

We lean on your imperishable word

And long for Easter Tide.

mary angela douglas 8 march 2024

DAEDALUS MOURNS FOR HIS SON

 

DAEDALUS MOURNS FOR HIS SON

His precarious project oh my son

Wept Daedalus in the aftermath

And the sea boiled up

And the heartache was too much

It overflowed the maths of myth

And no cartology ever could contain it

For what map is there of grief

When it’s too late

Such tears are gold

Now the eclipse lengthens

He joys no more

In the rush of wings

Not even in birdsong.

mary angela douglas 8 march 2024

I HAD A MIRROR A SHINING MIRROR

 

I HAD A MIRROR A SHINING MIRROR

I had a mirror a shining mirror

Emblazoned with rubies and diamonds

With emeralds

With delicate jade

I kept it hidden where I kept my heart

Guarded over by seven willows

Watched over by seven mourning swans

What will I do if they shatter my mirror

What will I do if they shatter my song

How will I prolong this cygnet life

Lord God carry me out of the disasters

Lord God mend my broken name

My mirror they have shattered

And I have wept like rain

Facing the other way now

In a fractured daze

I contemplate with anguish

The bewildering maze

That we call life on earth

And pray and pray

For a second birth

As for Your return.

mary angela douglas 7 march 2024

WE PRAISE THEE OH LORD, DEFENDING US FROM THE WAVES

 

And should I reassure

Those who without conscience

Leave us to endure

Random and brutal

The exigencies we never expect.

Hearing the drowning cries

Where men are deaf

How can we be bereft

I think God is proved more pure by their exit

Coming to defend us from the oncoming waves

And fiercer yet

Defending us from being left alone.

mary angela douglas 7 march 2024

PRECARIOUS

 

PRECARIOUS

The things I thought I would say in many languages

Cry themselves to sleep and burrow in the deep woods

Where starlight only speaks

And live bewildered, restive

In kingdoms of the precarious

Making do.

How will I chart their seas

Landlocked as I am

Disposed to being somewhere else instead

I write on clouds and then they drift away

Leaving me with

Finally no further words to say.

mary angela douglas 6 march 2024

THINGS WILL FALL AWAY

 

 

THINGS WILL FALL AWAY

Things will fall away

Like snow from the pines in early Spring

Songs that you forget to sing

Words will fall into echoing

Then into a glistening silence

You will stare into the skies of uncomprehending blues

And think I used to feel differently about you

Now though, there are skies within

And I know what sky is just by looking inward

Will the winter be long the mind asks the heart

And the heart does not reply.

The mind grows anxious.

We are leaving everything now or soon

Says the soul in its own phase of its own moon

And we weep suddenly without knowing why

And know that everything seems a goodbye

And the mirror reflects a different space and time.

When we won’t be here at all.

mary angela douglas 6 march 2024

LET NOW LOST CHARIOTS ACROSS THE EVENING SKY

for the poet Terri Kirby Erickson

Let now lost chariots across the evening sky

Signal to those who still can  see them

Poetry in exile but not yet dead

Poets arriving on a Jacob’s ladder

Light years away

Lamenting a bartered craft.

Let’s away I said to my desolate soul

And oh in such extremity lamenting to

Where promises are kept

And friends do not at least

desert their friends

glowing like Judas in the winter gardens.

Or think that cries for help are jest

Let us make the ultimate beau geste and flee

Where storybook endings still

May be possible.

At the very least let us use the last kindling of our freedom

If starving in the end

Still reciting the old fairy tales

And turn our backs on encroaching darkness.

And say with Christ in an Easter expiring

GOD LIVES.

And then the branching almond miracle o dawning:

Then;so do we.

mary angela douglas 6 march 2024

A SONG FOR THE SINGER: FOR JUDY COLLINS

 

Every note a silver drop

Into a halcyon sea

A golden star on the Christmas Tree

Of Song

How did you come along

Brimming with music and flowers, rain

sustaining the melody

Like a swan afloat

And beauty crosses the moat,

sublime

Defying the limits of time.

Mary angela douglas 5 february 2024

 

ALGEBRA ON A SPEEDING TRAIN

 

ALGEBRA ON A SPEEDING TRAIN

Algebra on a speeding train

Going, gone the other way

What else can I say

Word problems,

Not my cup of tea

How many miles till we get to Dover

Also not my bed of clover

How will I ever factor it away

I just want to read my books

Not achieve a fashion look

Not believe in Euclid

Anymore

I love imagery, noble deeds

Hats with flowers, sparkling beads

Things that wont my poor brain squeeze

Mathematics makes me sneeze.

Mary angela douglas 5 february 2024

 

NONE OF THIS IS REALLY MUSIC

None of this is really music

Passing away

The rain in the streets

Disappearing down drains

The eclipse of the sun

At noonday

None of this really

Shines like a pearl

And then wavers

Too close to the edge

So that we weep, we weep inconsolably:

Eternity is dead

I would have said instead of music,

Anything at all than music Christ has bled

Christ has bled

But he is the music, else

All men were dead.

Mary angela douglas 5 february 2024

TO MY MOTHER ON MY BIRTHDAY EVE

 

TO MY MOTHER ON MY BIRTHDAY EVE

The princess incognito on the edge of doom

Is visiting me at the playhouse

But the play will not resume

No role is left for a goose girl

I heard her weeping say

No role is left is left at all

For the former queen of the may

But waiting softly in my best dress

Recital dress and all

I held in my hands a basket of flowers

With green moss, ivory buds so small

In the beauty of the day

All I could think to say

You’re still you’re still,  my mama

Though you had to go away

to a sky blue room in Heaven

Where all the sparkles stay.

And I will be your daughter

And lift the mists and all

And mind my manners

And write my poems;

Draw roses on the walls.

Mary angela douglas 4 february 2024

SELF REFLECTING IN THE MIRROR OF MALEVICH

SELF REFLECTING IN THE MIRROR OF MALEVICH 

I stand in a circle of weeping light

An inscription from a poem I wrote

On the subject of Malevich

Where is that light and its migration

I wonder now in an altered nation

Thinking of the sweep of time

A little

But mostly still

Of Malevich.

In the square of night

So unresolved; 

My metaphor plays on and on

Mostly in my cloud dream head

Mostly I am still unread

But in my heart fond music streams

For my remembered heart wept gleams.

Mary angela douglas 4 february 2024

NOTE: The Russian artist, Kazimir Malevich.

STONE SOUP REDOUX OR: SOUP'S ON!

 

STONE SOUP REDOUX OR: SOUP'S ON!

Even as a child I loved that story

Though I didn’t understand at all

As I did much later

Its wry warning

A man comes to a certain village

With only a stone.

I have here he expounds to the curious

Watchful crowd that gathers

I have here a magic stone

My magic stone can make

The most wonderful stew

From merely boiling water

You have but to fetch

Some parsnips, carrots

Potatoes from your garden

Maybe snag a chicken or two

A small one will do

And then: Ill drop in the stone

For such a stew

You never have known

And so the mesmerized villagers run

To do his bidding.

I did the same.

Too many times to name.

Until the garden was depleted.

Rich broth indeed.

Now I am in need.

The peddlar having drunk it all up.

What was meant to be my sup.

Mary angela douglas 4 february 2024

RISING ABOVE THE TREADMILL OF THE DAYS

 

RISING ABOVE THE TREADMILL OF THE DAYS

Rising above the treadmill of the days

I reach the clouds in rose light so arrayed;

Imagination’s dower, chimes for us on the hour

There with you on the mount

Of transfiguration’s blaze;

If only we could stay

Still in the nets of beauty You have made

But we are gravity’s children too

And in the nets of time sometimes

Our visions fall from view. Beneath the wave;

Our hearts grow numb

longing for the reality

Of your Kingdom, come.

Mary angela douglas 4 february 2024

SOMETHING GOOD IS ALWAYS ABOUT TO HAPPEN

 

Something good is always about to happen

Hidden in nets of gold

And then it descends

What a surprise you say to all your friends

Something beautiful, again

Something marvelous there is

About to be marveled at you

never will be able again to forget

Entranced by the shadows blooming into light

How can it be you ask yourself

In a language of sheer delight

When before I thought that Light

Was forever leaving home? 

Mary angela douglas 3 february

BLUE MOONS, THE SAPPHIRE ANOMALIES

 

BLUE MOONS, THE SAPPHIRE ANOMALIES

Blue moons, the sapphire anomalies

You watch from your weathered post

And dream into the blue of clearly, hyacinth twilights

Beckoning, darkening the ones you loved the most and

You dream you are the sleep they are the sleep of many flowers

Or will be soon;

In a peacock hour resuming

And In an azure wind

You count –

Your losses

And you know you remember a tune

You used to play by heart

And it seems to you some angel messenger

Should descend and read to you

Softly, the disappearing

Preparing you 

For the twilight dark

In which you will be transfigured

Formally delivered From the sorrowful etudes

Played out

By ghosts on the ruined pianos

Out in the garden of phosphorescent roses

and in the indigo rains.

Mary angela douglas 3 february 2024

EPHEMERALITY

 

EPHEMERALITY

Everything makes me grieve

Perhaps you thought to yourself

More recently at the turning of the leaves

Everything makes me sigh

And I don’t really know the reason why

What used to feel only glorious

Now feels some way turned to stone.

Everything makes me wonder why

Beauty comes at such a steep price on earth

And fleetingly disperses in clouds and dearth

That spangles the sun

But never no matter how you

throw the dice

Is it ever really won.

Mary angela douglas 3 february 2024

AGAINST ALL ADVOCACY

 

AGAINST ALL ADVOCACY

a voice for the voiceless they say

to explain what they think of as

their high calling

but I know the voiceless are not

voiceless so what is this then

this new but not that new

advocacy but the stealing of limelight

a kind of distortion

no one is voiceless; so what is your game

what is your racket, hmm?

do you want to

interpose yourself between the sun

and their shadows to say to them

your voice is thin you need me

but the voiceless so called

do not want a megaphone

do not want to leave behind a statistical record

do not want a script to read from

do not want to be featured in a news article

where the core of the story is how the voiced

gave them their voice

because this cannot be

this is a lie that your voice can substitute

for the voiceless who truly had a voice all the time

who rose with gestures every morning

and cupped the sun in their hands

and wept their categories out

their voice out until it became a sea

a seashell murmuring known only to God

for whom you would also provide a voice

that is only

a shell a sound stage

if it were possible

where only you are heard

advocating and advocating

organizing starlight

while the willows sing without you

in their willow language

to their secret their myriad and jeweled selves

and always have

mary angela douglas 3 february 2024

We have anyway an advocate in Christ Jesus. Be a friend, be kind, be personal. Dont be an advocate. It is too grandiose. And too take one and pass it down mimeographed as to strategies. And often laden outright sometimes with emotional and psycholoogical manipulation of those who are being "served'.

AN ALTERNATE ENDING

 

AN ALTERNATE ENDING

What if we only heard the Christmas angels singing

The ones we thought we heard in childhood

At the so called End of the World

What if we heard the music of the spheres

Long years centuries aeons philosophers dreamed of

Right in the middle of work

Coming in over the speakers

At home, in school, or maybe at the shopping center also

Mulling over the question: nectarines or tangerines

Or both

And suddenly we are filled with flowers

We are the bouquets of the living God

And He plucks us all and carries us home

And we smile through the window our flower faces pressed to Eternity

At the gently disappearing Earth.

Mary angela douglas 2 february 2024

ON THE MUSIC OF PHILLIP GLASS

 

ON THE MUSIC OF PHILLIP GLASS

You with your spun cathedral music

Spun of glass, of delicate glass

With the rivers rushing on

Lost rivers of music

Counterpoint of the lost continents

In the breaking of ourselves of

Earth in space wavering a little

The piano sublime clock and counterclockwise

poise and counterpoise

swiss watch precision, perfection

yet why does the heart ache so

Lovely I am leaving the loveliness now

I am turning back in an infinite spiral

and now crosscurrently almost but never drowning

And subterranean modern and

Yet nostalgic wistful

Speed and the slowing heartbeat

Melt into one 

Enchantment

Are we staying or going asks the child

In a brief gust of flowers

All of us turning in the gyre of Time

Held and let go

Faltering yet continuing

The music marvels on;grief stricken,

we cry out for its shores.

mary angela douglas 2 february 2024

THE BEAUTIFUL THE SILVER

 

THE BEAUTIFUL THE SILVER

Perhaps you will cry into the wind

On some future day

Or in memory

Remembering an open meadow

How the grasses swayed

How the wind itself

Came up suddenly

And spelled out in the grasses for you

You are free;do not despair

Free as the clouds drifting

Free as the open air

And the meadow flowers will open their shy buds

And welcome the rain

Pouring down into

The beautiful the silver gullies of your soul.

Mary angela douglas 2 february 2024

CANDLEMAS

 

CANDLEMAS

I believe in the blessing of candles

In our Lady of light and of candelabras

Or the beeswax stars never burning down

The waxen flowers she wears for a crown

When I dream of light, I hear my mother singing.

I believe in the heart at rest

At rest in the Light and the Isle of the Blessed

And the lullaby sung in the dark of night

To all who wander and in their flight

I believe in the birds of night

Singing over great cold distances.

Mary angela douglas 2 february 2024

 

I WISH THAT I COULD SEND YOU PEACE

I WISH THAT I COULD SEND YOU PEACE

I wish that I could send you peace

Tied up with a velvet bow

Or peace, like quilting snow

Like a nearing light in the distance

When you have far to go

Or like a rippled stone

You hold in your hand

Like a talisman

In any gale that blows.

I close my eyes

I close my eyes

And pray the winter away

And pray that you will always

Find a warm place to stay

And food to eat that’s nourishing

And peace in a blue green bay

And on your hardest day,

The love of God.

Mary angela douglas 1 february 2024

 

INTELLECTUAL AND OTHER PROPERTY

 

INTELLECTUAL AND OTHER PROPERTY

after Edgar Allen Poe

Don't ever sign up to be a silent partner

Feeding your lines to the piranha

Thinking by such noble sacrifice

A crown in heaven to win, compassion to show.

Heaven laments your being scammed. Conned, 

Fleeced, overlooked coopted hijacked certainly betrayed

and doublecrossed or just that you feel so lost

There are many phrases for it

and many phases of it

In the end you wonder beset by ravens

the pernicious glow of El Dorado

What to do about

Your purloined heart sold for

A pennysworth on the open market.

Mary angela douglas 1 february 2024

ENGLISH AS A JEWELED LANGUAGE

 

ENGLISH AS A JEWELED LANGUAGE

dead center of the heart true it is that

English as a jeweled language I have praised

I have defended as no summer knight

Sightseeing on a posied path

But as a guardian small guardian

Of a flame the world cannot douse

Now I find my jeweled encryptions

Decorating the caves of others

Farther behind

And I do wonder with what conscience

Can they steal even God’s own jeweled lights

From the incoming tides and pass them off as their own

It isn’t that I pray their plagarized sandcastles

Will be the first to go

But it is hard to see the rose

That blossomed in your own heart

So specifically at a certain time and date

Be deposed

In this way

And crucified.

Mary angela douglas 1 february 2024

INTENTIONALITY

 

INTENTIONALITY

I throw into the well of time

Not coins of a golden aspiration

But my heart

Drifting into a watchful waystation

Echoing the moon;obdurate on moonless nights

Reserving my soul

To fish it out

Should it soundlessly drown there

In a language of clouds.

Mary angela douglas 1 february 2024

 

GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN

 

GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN

Good things will happen

Even though we don’t know how

They appeared when they appeared

Appleseed within the hour buds into

A lovely flower

Seemingly out of the blue everywhere

Don’t despair

This can happen to you

There may  be an irreplaceable

not erasable

Moment of grace

Blown on a wintry wind

Thats when the violets begin to bloom

Right in the middle of too much gloom;

In your room with the shades pulled down

Sad, alone, on your own

You will hear music cranking out loud for you

Spiraling out from the stars

This is your day brighter than a thousand suns

This is the way God can suddenly

Come into the picture you had painted so grey

Just to say I am here. My child, dear child

Have no fear. Have no fear.

Mary angela douglas 31 january 2024

PICTURE DICTIONARY OF THE BEAUTIFUL PHONICS

 

PICTURE DICTIONARY OF THE BEAUTIFUL PHONICS

We learned the sounds for sun and moon and stars

For house, for home, for all the hours

For parents, grandparents

Plant and stone

For seasons, colors, holidays too

For friend, for teacher

For church and school

For ice cream pink within the cone

For rains  that fall

For feeling alone

For green of grass

For red of rose

For love of thee

Lord, I compose

Small songs of memory

And of love

And mourn and mourn

The wounded Dove.

My language

Rumbling, shorn of fleece

Made out of brickbats now

And stick figures unsmiling.

Mary angela douglas 31 january 2024

NOTE ON THE POEM:

On the rampant current dumbing down and political distortions going on in the English language now with the coining of new terms and phrases completely out of sync with the beauty of the language. That is what this simple poem is about.

THE THINGS AT THE TIME YOU THOUGHT WERE REAL

 

THE THINGS AT THE TIME YOU THOUGHT WERE REAL

What do you do with the things that you

Thought at the time were real

That later proved to be facades

The wreckage of stage scenery

No time to rehearse the part

You never thought you would play

It just turns out that way

So you anchor yourself hopefully in God

Who never pretends who never cons the part

Because He is always and only Himself

Faultless and faithful beyond measure

Who never betrays you from the start

Or even when

The Play has ended;

The city has been sacked.

Mary angela douglas 29 january 2024

BLOSSOMING

 

BLOSSOMING

How did we not know when we were younger

We were breathing on a windowpane of stars

Every day at twilight we were being or

At naptimes with the door to dream ajar

How did we not guess that every blossom

In the summer yard would always bloom

Pink and rosy while we both played possum

As Grandmother said, just peeking in our room

How much we wanted then to stay awake

If only for the pink blossom’s sake

For all our blossoming, swift as afternoons.

Mary angela douglas 29 january 2024

P.S. "playing possum" is an old Southern expression (in the U.S.) often referring to children pretending to be asleep when they are not, as well as other scenarios I dont know a thing about referring to the possum's abioity to feign sleep.

THERE'S SNOW IN THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTH CAROLINA

 

THERE’S SNOW IN THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTH CAROLINA

There’s snow in the mountains of North Carolina

But here it’s primarily Spring

I imagine myself beside orange blossom fountains

in Spain so Seville is my theme

I scramble in sand with my Emeralds in hand

In love with the waterfall cascades

I sit in the shade and imagine the stage

And the angels with new crystal beading

And if I don’t stop you’ll know that I’m caught

In a borealis of reading

this is a song about random things, angels wings

flowers I fling

don’t try to read anything into it

I mix all the puzzles there are together

To compose a new picture that fits

My imagination

My jumbly imagination

That wont do a thing for the nation

But sure means a Party to me.

Mary angela douglas 29 january 2024

RADIO DAYS VICARIOUSLY SUMMONED

 

RADIO DAYS VICARIOUSLY SUMMONED

Going back to the radio days

And the means and the ways

To accomplish your dreams

It seems like we’re all in some nostalgic stream

Of memories we were too young to have

But we slip right back on the radio track

With the clips we hear of the years

We weren’t here but our parents were our grandparents

Kicking up the rug eating raspberry shrub

On the porch my dears

I wish I could say they didn’t go away

And the world is strange

Now , rearranged

To such an extent

And the rent’s so high

We must live in the sky

On lemon chiffon pie

In the clouds with our dreams

And the sunshine streams

And the radio blares

And it seems like we’re

In a Kitchenette Somewhere

With the radio on and a jingly song

And a drama or two

To keep the wars from seeping through.

Mary angela douglas 28 january 2024

RETURN

 

RETURN

Sometimes I feel the clock of earth

Gets dizzy, forgets its place in the music

And I wake to see the dense fogs settling

Or the clouds in cirrus gold edged display

As if this were another calendar day

In some distant century and I want all of a sudden

To read only 19^th century novels or poetry

To find fresh violets pressed in a volume with an odor of sanctity

Fresh as that Spring from a vanished chapel gathered

Still purpled, light blue as canticles sung by the saints

Only recently

To expect the sound of carriages in the streets

And faintly to feel as though something extremely magical

Had occurred

To feel my soul as if it were distinct from all the Ages

Already beyond Time, incapable of a prosaic return.

Mary angela douglas 28 january 2024

LULLABY NEVER SUNG TO VAN GOGH

 

LULLABY NEVER SUNG TO VAN GOGH

The yellow stars and the indigo skies

In the painting I will love till I die

The yellow café and the tables blue

Outside in the rain and the light pouring through

And the halos the swirling around the stars

Who knows who knows how distant they are

In the painting that now is forever on view

And if the stars in their former lives

Are still only shining for you, for you.

Mary angela douglas 28 january 2024

CONTIGUOUS FIGURES ON A FIELD OF SNOW

 

CONTIGUOUS FIGURES ON A FIELD OF SNOW

Continguous figures on a field of snow

I imagined a painting from a future art show

Perhaps and I heard critics praise

All of its features under a glaze

Or they said it was Balanchine’s last ballet

Continguous figures on a field of blue

It seemed to be summer

When that was on view

Or dancing in sapphires

The ballet renewed

Another bright season

For dancing etudes

What rhyme or what reason

Drives them to me

These fragments of phrases

Of brief prophecy

Or ghostlike remembrances

Artists gone by

Who dream of the work they could never contrive

Mary angela douglas 27 january 2024

IF ONLY WE HEARD ONE SYLLABLE OF IT

 

 

IF ONLY WE HEARD ONE SYLLABLE OF IT

What was his voice like, I wonder, Van Gogh.

Was it sunflower husk, a river of gold

A hesitance of spring buds chilled as early April

Was it the will to dream in colours he could not afford

Was his voice crackled did it flare suddenly and then ebb

Like a misinterpreted sea and self abating

Was he then silent, afraid

Did he plead

In flights of crows disremembering everything

Was his voice timorous as a child

Was he mute for days

I cannot say I cannot think I think in a daze of sorrow

If only we heard one syllable of it

Breaking like stones in a difficult field

We would understand it all.

Mary angela douglas 27 january 2024

LET THE ENUNCIATING ANGELS COME

 

Let the enunciating angels come

Speaking in dreamy snow syllables

Their tardy annunciations

We shall not laugh at the moonrise in their eyes

Their wings of magenta tipped with gold as in the paintings

Of the Renaissance masters,

We will be still.

And cherish their wingprints as they skid on ice

Overladen with Christmas messages

From the years

Without the sun.

Mary angela douglas 27 january 2024

P.S.I had a dream just this late afternoon that I was sending a message online with only the words beautiful enunciation in it and then, in the dream, I thought to myself isnt it odd how closely related in sound the words enunciation and annunciation are. And I remembered in the dream how much my Grandmother always stressed to my sister and me how important it is in speaking to always enunciate your words. Then I woke up and immediately wrote this poem. I am very happy with this poem as it made me laugh. I hope someone else likes it too, especially the good angels. And when you think about it, on a practical level it IS very important that when the angels DO come to deliver a message they deliver it with very clear enunciation;otherwise, things may go haywire. And no one will know what to do