To Be Sung In White Tulle, Silver-Sequined

the king mislaid his

blueprint for the stars

and cries at night

into his golden shadow

lost courtiers kneel

before the showcase cakes

little children may not eat

no matter how long they say

they are sorry

that the toeshoe thistledown moon

is slipping farther everyday

down the rimed rose campion

windows of the castle.

but they will keep their

diamond latchkeys safe

at this rhapsodic distance from the sun-

from the sparklers' fizzy dreaming at the end-

from that last summer-

and bless - and bless-

eternal lily snows on the fleeting ground

mary angela douglas 25 may 2011

Miniatures(You Must Live Within Your Means)

you must live within your means

they said to the artist who was breaking off

little pieces from the sun

when he ran out of cadmium yellow:

"I don't know what you mean," he sighed

and dreamed

that he was eating clouds

while they remained perturbed...

[that he was...]

out in the fields reciting,

biting off the wind so late in the day;

and in the green midnights

(fresh out of rain barrels),

he wept his rainbow tears, quite carefully:

catching them on his

frescoed fingertips,

one by one-

so that later

in 200 years they were widely prized

by the great collectors everywhere

for their unusual sheen-

mary angela douglas 8 may 2011

Azul

[to Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958)]

Juan Ramon standing amid blue flowers

did not hear me calling

small birds flew on every side

through chinks in a chain-link cloud and over

the scuttled rainbows of your sighs I picked up on the ground

to far-away laughter

oh but "not-it" I cried out from

the space left by your shadow

on the grass

like a child in a game of tag,

the last one left in the

blonde and feathered fields still

unashamed

of starlight by the railroad tracks

and hotel rolls with real pats of butter-

at home in the pink stucco of "play-like" afternoons...

Sr. Jiminez bluer than the bluest

shadows could be,

could it be the earth is disenchanted?

will we grow apart?

stand still, I said, with a mouthful of pins

I will sew your shadow to the sky

and line it with pale green stars

it's strange while

I'm still trying to speak

in lilies and small roses

in blue diamonds secretly

distinctly...

oh why do you keep on

haunting your own poems

it hurts so much

even in my minted sleep or

is it, dream?

to be crumpling up the violet

of mimeographed vocabulary lists

again-

and practicing

balletic leaps by the

persimmon trees

it's not that I'm that far

from all those merry dialogues

about butter about arroz con

pollo about beaten chocolate-

regarding time I find it hard to keep

the tenses straight:

do I keep breaking the heart of moonlight

without knowing why-

or is all that hushed?

and can I pray to God in

pure hibiscus, too?

entenderás...

a hundred years from home

no one recognized my speech

but the blue wind and God

and the tire-swing swung

in glittering silence by the

small girl dressed in

blue porous happiness...

mary angela douglas april 26-april 28, 2011

The Rose-Red Sealing Wax On The Letter's Dry Now

the rose-red sealing wax on the letter's dry now;

the rose-red rose-white story comes to rest

like the see-saw on the frozen playground

like the rusted swings still floating in no wind at all.

frost-emulsed are the Christmas windows

and the glorious Holly and the Star we looked through to see:

the golden bears delivered from their worst selves

on such a cinnamon-sequined day as this.

but I can't tell you the end of the story

or why my cloud-shaped jigsaw piece won't fit

(not even on Christmas morning)

in the thin sky above the little house

swept penny-bright and latched.

I went a long cold way in my scuffed shoes

to fling a milk quartz crackly word into

the moss green pools of

something not remembered, but that shone.

don't tell your wishes ever or:

they'll not come true

was whispered in my every dream

but I'll tell you the Christmas angels cried:

"FEAR NOT"-

though years of speaking only underwater

made it hard to see

their real words on the page.

I wished that God would turn

the snow-bright word my Mother packed

(along with her sandwiches of butter and sugar)

into a language only angel's hear.

mary angela douglas 5 october 2009 -

*references to the Brothers' Grimm fairy story: Rose Red, Rose White

The Childhood Of Marcel Proust

your teacup brims with starry light, rich

traceries of time - translucent as

fresh raspberries bought

on a day by M. Swann

heaped on fairytale plates that chime

when the scenes shine through

somewhat berry-stained.

bright doves float through your

stained glass hands through

opaline rosaries of the rain and

tuned to a strange cessation

in a dream we almost see

the glint of (home):

taking the madeline

dipped in snow

and a nectared universe...

your linden angels pause, mid-air

cognizant of a pale green rustling

but no one's there

just once to say:

Good night, dream's child,

you'll sleep the steeple

out of the sky's

late roses at Combray

and wonder how

it all turned into

stalactite colors overnight

dripping down winter walls

sweet candle-wax and pure

resurgences of rain.

but the 13th guest arrives

mid-scene to no

gold place setting

set with rubies

and who can still the lime-leafed - unrestrained-

lamentation of the rain...

your hawthorn branches

in the dusk

its storied snowy paths more dear

to lead you out of houses here-

this suddenly - no longer home.

but you're still writing when the angels come

the rose-torn chanson of the rain

scratched out, then blooming once again;

they wait for you to finish up

fanning themselves with their crystal haloes

distracted by your clouds of sheer Limoges...

mixing the pink or is it blue

tinctures of remaining skies

you turn to ask them

just to stall:

the peacock or mimosa?

but God turns down the flaring wick

color by color almost

regretfully.

the angels turn:

fiery medallions on their sleeves

like Christmas refractions

most intensely felt,

a silken step...

and mama comes

with a bunch of heliotrope

a fugitive smile then

"Marcel!"

blue violet banks off creamy distances.

prevail in Heaven now

when childhood fears are hushed

and the holy candles lit forever

from hawthorn petals in your hands

you clutched at the last moment

afraid to let go.

how would you ever leave them here-

all your white orchards,

where Beauty's often not revered

along the via dolorosa

and breaks the thin importunate glaze

on a lake of half-way frozen

lies.

and lost and lost

where mirrors on the

other side

can't give the key-light back

of cherished nacre

anymore.

but the phrase in rainbow clarity appears

through veils and veils of summer rain

and this gardenia darkness knows that

every time the music's played.

it rushes on...

mary angela douglas 29-31 may; 1 june 2010

VAN GOGH TO HIS BROTHER, UNDATED LETTER, SUMMER, 1891

VAN GOGH TO HIS BROTHER, UNDATED LETTER, SUMMER 1891

[to my brother, Alan Leslie Douglas, in memorium)

the yellow leaves were falling

I could not catch them with my hands

the yellow stars and the pastel haloes

round them, ringing like colored glass

and every shade, a sound:

I was painting them mid-flight-

rosettes, like medals pinned against

the night, my

Legion of Honor-

you know, we always knew the

time of orchards was so brief, remember?

the pink and the mauve - the

apricot light - the moment's lightening.

I have a new studio; the walls are iris,

touched with snow.

I'm painting in colors we never

dreamed existed - without haste.

Dear Theo.

nothing is wasted.

mary angela douglas 23 april 2009

Note on the poem: I do know that Van Gogh died in 1890. I wrote this poem imagining what might have happened if he had lived for another year as it often happens in life that unexpected good happens after tremendous difficulty. 

Or the poem can be understood as a message to Theo from Van Gogh in the afterlife where he understands his art completely and is allowed to continue in it.

Shed No Tears, Fond Unicorn

(with ref.  to the "a mon seul desir" Lady with The Unicorn medieval tapestry at the Cluny Museum in Paris i only saw in a book, but nevertheless, cherish)

 shed no tears, fond Unicorn

golden are the tapestries, still,

I leave you to inhabit, shyly on these

museum walls,

in rooms with gilded conversations

guided tours-

beyond burgundy ropes of velvet

graze on, continually - with good will.

your hoof in my hand:

I hope you'll be discreet

munching the shadows of

departing guests

only a little

and the pastel mints at party's end.

Be brave, always.

I'm braiding my primrose stories

just for You

and the farther fields of honour.

mary angela douglas 30 may; 1 june 2010

Around The Fairytale's Gemstoned Page

[to my Grandmother, Lucy W. Young, my Grandfather Milton B. Young and to Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, among others...thank you! and thanks are due to God since as a friend once said, "God gives us the fairytales to show us the way home... "(P.S. To my mother too, of course. Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas, who spoke in syllables of strawberry and utter cream all the time. really.), my charming sister too, daughter of music, Sharon)

around the fairytale's gem-stoned page are sun splattered leaves and berries softening the borders ferny angels lightly penciled in beyond the trees that shift like pedaled dreams 

on the dream piano of the pale blue country lined with gold I pray to someday rescue if I can- pure swans down drifts down these elaborate Capitals on every sunset's page the 

swans revert to children and are saved on the one rock left in the water coloured whirlpools of their sea- and I skip backwards to a small green house with spearmint strip-ed 

awnings or a pink- beige brick with picture windows and mimosa trees... you can't fade away along the borders flushed with glaced roses I won't let you- and every time 

i close my eyes the skies are pleated with your swans the ruby candlestick in Beauty's room drips very lime-green wax all over my small table with the circus scenes. maybe 

for childhood's jam-spooned days, alone, they gathered all those startling coronations, words of best green velvet, I don't know how else the carriage came to be cut from the 

creamy rind of citrus afternoons as if with the golden scissors of a King Hans Christian Andersen it's still me wavering in a pink embroidered dress and golden slippers, 

wobbling near the icy angels with their candle spun whispering as they say: rework the hidden brocades now of all lost feelings, places, courtiers, things- in snowy silence 

heaped with silver lilies...shine... I can't break faith with the fairytale task till vaster kingdoms come and my sister's perfect Chopin bubble clears the pink-white-red azaleaed 

fence while the clouds keep billowing out beneath their clothespins the milk makes butter islands in the oatmeal until- the last sweet early peas are sorted satisfactorily 

from the Milky Way and kept in the stoppered bottle on our etagere, the one the colour of ashes of roses... but will they turn to diamonds in the end or chicken pie you may well 

wonder when the curtains close... Grandmother's playing Liebestraum again in her rose taffeta on a rose taffeta staff she turned to diamond music in the end taking my 

Grandfather's arm and heading upward without her pearl opera glasses but with the Psalms all double scored in moonlight... the day winds down like antique toys in soft 

yellow chenille- the jeweled heart sifts in the furnace the tin soldier cannot reach the tabletop... someday I will learn to live expecting better swans and in your name I'll find the 

lemon latitudes so fine of the summers everywhere now- of the hidden mermaids with a sainted love dissolving into foam... 

mary angela douglas 5 april 2011

Memento Vivere

[in loving memory to my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas (1927-1993) and

to Sara Teasdale (1894-1933), with abiding respect]

pink marigold suns have slipped away

like the cameo cares of Sara Teasdale

but I am here

with the dove-lapsed valentine

folded up I always meant to

send her, across time-

and the air of St. Louis

crumples like rose parchment

kindling lost kingdomes:

are you there?

as I hold out one cream starched

dawn's particular corner

for you to catch- dim orchards washed-

green rains...

forget-me-nots at tea

I'm dreaming a cloud

like an envelope. sepia-dipped

twice over. filled

with your manifold

weeping harps your sunbursts

but it's delayed, misplaced,

and where

will I really be that

ringed with light again

sustaining when I can

the fleeting imprint of so many violet skies...

here at the orphaned window still

I trace your leaves and lilies through the mist

in tinctured starlight

scrapbook cherished

weighing in scales of pearl the clock face moon

but the afternoon grows older, after all

the tide of wishes turns...

above the noise of mere battlefields

every singed and salvaged word

I praise

and look past

the garnet consolations of the epic dead

to see

white wave on wave

of your delight

bright words

never blind, inlaid

like fires in opal

self-contained

the rainbowed startled reveries (of God)

inferred:

and on - at last-

the unclasped fairytale page unwavering

the heart stenciled postscript of the child

who cried for Beauty

and was heard-

mary angela douglas 13-14 march 2011

*"Latin, remember to live"

Sara Teasdale poet of starlight forgotten later in life was born in St. Louis where I also went to school. My mother loved her poetry as well.

Dim As The Bride

dim as the bride

on the last horizon-

all of my snows were home

they have floated now

like light through veiled prisms breaking;

I'm not called away to their collapse.

the offices on the moon are clouded.

there's no line left to stand in here on earth

all of my snows were true

but now, they freeze into

these pale trajectories of flights dismantled

where green grass doesn't stain

where blue is no longer sky yet-

"bends not with the remover to remove"*

love is not love that bruises

the least snowflake fading

though the windlass fails.

now the pollen of my farthest star

is weeping

and someone's yanked the chain

on the light-bulb moon

lily shadows lily

but all my snows

in soft, bright encore reappear

as I am gathering still

these small waxen words revealed

over a roiling sea...

oh icarus

o Christ.

remember me

mary angela douglas 22-23 february 2011

*Shakespeare sonnet

I Looked Up And All The Stars Were Jasmine

"The call to action last Saturday draw less attention to the Chinese people. However, in Beijing, a man named Liu Xiaobai 25 years old was ambushed by the police when putting jasmine flowers in front of fast food restaurants, especially, McDonald's, which was mentioned as the location of a planned protest, and took some photos there.


"I was very scared when the police took my cell phone. I just put some white flowers. What's wrong with that," said Liu. "I'm an ordinary citizen who love peace."


Security forces intended to arrest Liu previously, but the crowd of journalists initially prevented the arrest. Two other men were also arrested. Not yet clear whether the actions were related to 'Revolution Jasmine'. The arrest took place in Shanghai.


On Sunday, the government went further, reaching the virtual world. Search for the keyword 'jasmine' is blocked in similar micro-blogging site Twitter in China, Renren.com. Not only that, short messaging service via mobile phones are also disturbed."


AP Article found on VIVA newspost Internet Sunday February 20, 2011 after initially hearing about this on BBC Radio
====================================================================================
I looked up and all the stars were jasmine
the moon was veiled in jasmine
the crickets in the dark
sang "jasmine", "jasmine"


in my heart a small white
flower so perfumed
in my heart a small
white flower, delicate, in freedom


bloomed and bloomed.


I looked out and all
the earth was jasmine
folded into Space save in


one place, only-
a poet with one last word to spend
spread a trail of jasmine


and was led away to who
knows where by those afraid
of only flowers.


now the lines on God's own weeping palm
are crossed and crossed again,
but they spell "Jasmine"


and all my tears-
and all my tears-
are jasmine. jasmine.


mary angela douglas 20 february 2011

Many Beautiful Things Are Lost

many beautiful things are lost

in the sea of forgetfulness

and the clipped birds

from fairytale regions

cannot rise

oh bring to me

as of old

the laden ships

and the gold of words spoken

for beauty alone and for no other reason

so that I am not lost

so that I am not lost-

with them-

mary angela douglas 20 february 2011

Unwrapping The Paper Theatre Of The Mind

unwrapping the paper theatre of the mind

see the gold of stardust sifting past

the foiled huntsmen in the distance...

the backyard roses heaped up on the stage

let you know the end of something shines-

but you are too entranced to move

when no wind stirs the whirring pinwheels

and the dolls can't tear their marbly eyes away

from the cardboard angel flittering

in a tiny pink spotlight.

let the colored filters turn their

candied cellophane light,

rickety, on a

single crystal slipper-

though the paper candelabrum blaze

in medias res...

the razzle-dazzled mouse runs down

the semblance of a chime-

it's time to go.

and you can feel

faery music from the battlements

begin, this time, for real-

mary angela douglas 3 february 2011

Experts

[to Emily Dickinson]

teaching the wind to speak

they make a name: the blue jay

feather's forced to float down

clouds like jewels - the rose

to scatter petals pinkly

on the crystal pavement

credited to who knows who;

they're sure to get the world's best prize-

they mine the gold out of the sun

and they will feed

on light forever after

so it seems they have to tell

the bird on the stark unboughten bough

what singing is for-

all things arrive to their own orbit

anyway, bearing a coded music-

bending no rainbowed

showy piano strings just

to prove a point at the concert

having no need of expertise the diamond worlds move on-

mary angela douglas 18 december 2010

Shadows Of Swans, Snow Tears Magisterial

shadows of swans, snow tears magisterial

in this white valentine enfolded are

framed at the window from

which I cannot turn

there are silver apples in the air

will I ever understand

your pure spectacles so soundless

re-enactments of lost stars as they are losing

light

oh what in your mind makes it begin again...

how your heart breaks off

little pieces from a distant

sky to say something, anything

filtered through lace and lace and

mystifying - so that I cannot hear-

but only feel it-

shred your clear crystal flowers from on High

for softest reasons known only to You-

and hush the shadows of swans in me

that want to sing only the ends of the stories, oh-

there are silver apples on the air

this winter in Shalott let the wind through the

syllables of trees

stand still-

mary angela douglas 7 december, 4 december 2010