Deep In The Long Ago

"and did you open the treasury of snow"

-The Holy Bible

deep in the long ago

deeper than snow

hearts have been hidden

by One who knows.

past all disaster and

chilling remark

farther than starlight

purer than art there

time cannot render

what God can impart

where green ever varies

in woodlands apart

spring lives forever

and never departs

purer than starlight

farther than art

perfumed of all roses

and taffy sunlight

proving the poets

they laughed at

were right

deeper than snowfall

Christmas bells chime

forever and ever

you'll know that it's time

when the secret heart's bidden

by One who knows

every chapter of long ago

rose upon rose

mary angela douglas 9 january 2014

Jump Rope Rhyme For Virginia Woolf

[in honor of the day my grandmother, laughing, said my great aunt worried I would face a grim future not even knowing how to bake banana bread...]

Virginia Woolf Woolf Woolf

could barely cook cook cook

but she could write write write

all dressed in white white white

and she could think think think

in every shade of ink ink ink

on the way to Kew Kew Kew

in a gown of blue blue blue

and she could see see see

better than Albee bee bee...

mary angela douglas 8 january 2014

Picture Book

may you remain on earth a long time

a few pages smudged with melted chocolate

not by design

or emphatic turquoise crayon scribbled on

yet part of a snowiness that will endure

wedged in your cardboard seams,

trellised in your rose bright borders

whenever a golden something

treads invisibly on the apricot sash of

the princess and we held our breath

to see what astonishment is made of

on the very next page.

among all toys you're queen or

king of the domino kingdoms

splashed with finger paints

a little cobwebbed, only in starlight.

wars can come and go but not here.

in the lilac friendly neighborhoods

so dear to your bound kingdoms everywhere

the grass grows waist high

with no complaints from the neighbors;

your rising sun watercoloured

between two green hills

a little chalky, light peach

egg-fried.

first day of all first days the best preserved

jam or jelly of all berries the most delicious

fairy splendid compote.

I wrote you on my heart back then

most beautiful page turning that

has ever been at the

pink frosted picnic that can never end;

of friends, the best:

exorbitant, exuberant rainbowed

perpetually- 

blessed.

mary angela douglas 8 january 2014

It's The Confetti Of Moonlight

it's the confetti of moonlight

poured on the small child's floor overnight

that lets her sleep in wonder

never getting up at all

except when she smells ice cream

from the hall all the way down

from the buttercup kitchen

vanilla with Hershey's sauce

and maraschinos scooped into three

bowls now, not two.

prescient from the beginning

regarding things that matter.

a strawberry scattered dawn

the clover spared from the lawnmower

rejoiced over with her little sister.

the stars the stars the stars

from a small window viewed

and endlessly from the top bunk

not to be overshadowed by the

pink nightlight

in the pale blue room, asleep.

mary angela douglas 3 january 2014

Mulberry Mulled The Princess

mulberry mulled the Princess,

for a new gown.

with slippers of cranberried broidery

designed by elves

on thistledown holiday

surprised at play

and ordered to dress-make

or else.

experience came hard for the princess.

a mulberry dress gift-wrapped at last

arrived by parcel post in blinding snow

with mustard colored shoes.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2014

Beautiful Dress

[to my Grandmother]

it was sewn for valor.

handstitched.

with pearl embroidered

to shine quietly.

not to cause distress.

it swishes like the colours

of roses raindroped furling

under clouds of violet.

before the storms of

yearning,

silent,

perfumed of lilies.

staunchness at the yoke

and a hidden thread of gold

in perfect stitches by the

Unseen runs through this silk of night

illumined by angels in flight

the music he died for.

prove it was a labor of love.

wear it.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2014

A Paperweight Pennysworth Of Pink Quartz Hearts, Please

"here is the paperweight of pink quartz hearts.

that can't be broken;

a gift for a seamless dream, occasionally,

don't you think? a misplaced birthday,

a tin woodman on his way;

the bracken valentine burnished

like the burning bush"-

(the salesperson shimmered in the high-end retail

scheme of things.)

"near the castle lies the fairytale bridge

and mother of pearl, the moat filled to the brim

and certainly.

you can't ask for much more, these days,
for the price."

these days.

the pink quartz stars shine in the afternoons

of carnation tissue sunsets

 in the winter cold

and the peach bright something

out of reach is still, in the mind,

a lovely thing

not needing to be owned.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2014;rev. 2 january 2015

It's All Lemon Chiffon

it's all lemon chiffon

she sighed in a fifties dress shop

in a dream.

don't you have any other colours?

something in strawberry pink?

or Cinderella jump-rope-rhyming  green?

you'll see, it's not the frothiness I mind.

the skirts fuller than full moons.

all as they should be.

the sequined, beaded tops that shine

uncompromised as a sweetheart neckline.

I'm just not a lemon drop person

dropping a line or two on forsythia stationary

when there's time to say thank you

for the yellow everything.

it was just what I wanted.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2014

Cake Batter Poem I Pour You Into The Pan

cake batter poem, I pour you into the pan

shaped like a star, a heart.

will anyone eat you?

will they call you scrumptious?

will they covet your frosted roses

on each slice?

I'm glad you never burn in the oven

like the other cakes do.

you always come out just right

and flavorful, too.

I like to think so.

cake batter poem

I'll sprinkle you with candied everything

and sugared violets you know,

half hidden under the snow of your icing

for any guest on winter's road

a long way off from spring

mary angela douglas 2 january 2014

Red Teakettle

[to Natalia (who gave me the red teakettle)]

red teakettle.

colour of roses.

or cherries.

depending on the light from one window.

your whistling is not merry.

but a shriek from Xanadu.

perfect for vesuvial tea

each time I'm reading and

forget you're on the stove.

forgive me.

at Christmas I will pour you

into an emerald cup.

but you are not seasonal.

on grey days against walls

the color of pale butter

you try to shine like rubies

in a cockpit kitchenette

designed by dolls.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2014

Note on the poem:  Though I am American I have always loved the British spelling "colour".  In my poems I use the British spelling (colour) to convey (as it does to me) an exuberant colour or feeling.  When I use the plainer American spelling, "color" (and not to say I feel all American spelling is plain, by any means) it is to convey a certain diminishment of feeling or color, something subdued.  Very hard to explain this without having a third spelling!

It makes me happy to do so.  In the sixth grade when I was twelve and had finished Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre for the first time,  I started using "colour" in all my papers for school and kept getting marked down for it in red ink (you can guess the ink was the color red). 

Privately I thought, Charlotte Bronte could not be mistaken.  Every time I use "colour" thinking back on this, I feel a tiny sense of victory. Colour. Colour Colour.

Dorothy Slept In The Emerald Eye Of Cyclones

Dorothy slept in the emerald eye of cyclones

hearing the sound of running water, running footsteps;

away from these gold fields, she cried!

to her surprise already

missing home, and that amazed by trees

shedding emerald leaves

along the boulevards of dreams and

feeling a little small among the figurines,

the lemon drop candy dished breakables.

Dorothy, at once! in a green dress, once ice blue-

remained herself, predictable as storms

finding the irregular beautiful; on the doorstep of

many houses peering in

to admire so rainbow-boxed!

the blooms of near neighbors 

next door to a dream and

violet, swirled as carnival glass, country, contrary-wise.

deep in His iridescence, not to be swept away.

I haven't come to stay she said firmly.

waking up in the afternoon

to ham biscuits, farmhouse coffee

2/3 cream.

to her own room

with the bluebird wallpaper.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2014;rev. august 20, 2014

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014!

A Very Happy New Year 2014 to everyone!

God bless and keep you in the New Year.

mary angela douglas

"Go Out Into the World!" She Cried She Cried

"go out into the world!" she cried she cried

tipping their wings with frost

in the early spring,

the false queen.

the children turned to birds, obeyed.

and lifted heavy wings.

interminable is their flight, oh God-

and the sun is going down

swiftly into a sea made out of violets.

guard their meadows.

they are out of sight.

oh mother bereft of song

how long you waited by the picture

windows of a twilight

for their least return.

mary angela douglas 31 december 2013;rev. 21 november 2014

Certain Poets Read The Skies As They Did Before

writing in diamonds on the winter skies

God in His singular Castle keeps the night

and tries once more to scatter poems

for you

from the crystal highlands of His ultimate Preciousness.

but I am semi-precious and can't

quite catch the drift, do you?

of all this silver coinage everywhere.

and rubies that can't be spent

are gathering in His West 

where the slow swans rise.

oh, ever new cryptology that can't be

decoded yet

though we are trying to-

transcribing what we knew before

or thought we did-

and what we almost hear

mary angela douglas 30 december 2013;rev. 21 november 2014

The Things You Think You Ought To Know

the things you think you ought to know

are snickering in the closet by the chalk board erasers.

the things you ought to know

(by now)

linger by the door when you line up to go home.

they know who you are;

the one with the scuffed shoes

(whose shoes are polished every night

bright beyond new penny, bright)

who dreams while the ice cream melts in the cup

with the flat wooden spoon

day-by-day in the afternoons.

but you know the clouds in pink and blue

are scudding across a winter sky

that looks so springlike out the stenciled windows

and you know the trinity is three leaves of golds

kissed on a single stem,

is loving you and kind

and you can run can run like the wind

far from the things they think you ought to know

and the guilt of the red and green crepe paper bells

made out of paper

made out of paper and they never ring.

the rosy punch and cookies when you

haven't finished your arithmetic

you haven't finished your arithmetic

but you live in a house

where you can count on love

to triumph always in the end

to triumph always in the end

whenever the pastel skies can snow

over the things you ought to know.

over the things you ought to know.

mary angela douglas 29 december 2013

Note on the poem: this poem stems from an experience in elementary school on the last day before Christmas vacation when we had our Christmas partythe last two hours of the day only the teacher held me back from the party because I hadn't finished the arithmetic for the day from the problems on the board because I couldn't understand them somehow.

Finally, she said in a voice edged with exasperation, well, Mary go on to the party.I can see you're never going to finish.  And I remember the feeling of happiness going to the party and sadness at being the last one and the happiness of going

home.

Was It Falling Down In Daylight

[for Sylvia Plath]

"because their words had forked no lightening..."

=Dylan Thomas

how did it feel to write that way

dark side of the mirror to mirror's

sad back to back

expressive but incommunicado

scarcely published in the magazines

bypassing your intensity

was it

like falling down in daylight

with everyone watching you

wringing the light from your last pearls

princess, beekeeper of the denser luminosities-

in the fair far fairy tale woods can

you take the wrong turn

and get lost in the lostness

did you.

when she came with her basket

that last time (the witch) with her

pale green laces her used-up mythologies

her gold apple laced with a glimmering poison

how I wish you had slammed the door

in her face and not invited her in for pastries

and coffee.

oh, but you became a conduit

of darkness with the eyes of the seer

everywhere on the surface of 

your peacock soul so blue and green

so gold and yet despairing

who vividly sees no road ahead

the bridge washed out-

the fog never lifting from the jeweled path

that could be.

who trained you to live without hope

mining your own ore to extinction;

weeping in every cell of the

honeycomb. 

sharp-sheared, untimely in the rose gardens.

didn't anyone notice

you grieving there in your thin, bright dress

(quenching your wedding finery, Eurydice

all by yourself

in the choice that won't come back)

but the thieving oracles

you listened to 

or, was it something someone said

lightly on a summer day, in passing,

not meaning it really, in the strawberry patch

by the side of a house

so that everything afterwards was

kaleidoscope smashed, no longer turning 

except the one ardour for poetry

calling, Sylvia,

keeper of the lamp with the radioactive flair.

or was it something said again and again

and driven home in the chill and damp the subterfuge

or only the owl feather's drifting down

on you, the snowy owl when you

wished for snow instead and

to be washed in light like Christmas

but could not be. somehow. otherwise.

or was it a penchant for the rookery for

the raven's wing on no upswing, for the bleak days.

why couldn't you see so many times

there was a brightness about your head;

like a saint's aureole, it shows in old photographs

that cannot show that the falling down in daylight,

rainlight, goodbye, unbluebirded in a tower of dew

I am vanishing

my winnowed children in the greylight (she cried)-

blinded you instead, gleam after banished gleam

to any other outcome

or crook of the lightening's tree...

CHORUS (or what is left of it):

in the lousy kitchenette

the realms of your eyelids, Ladye,  fluttered: "snow"

mary angela douglas 25 december 2013;revised 29 december 2013

Dear Reader:

Please look for light not darkness.  Please hold onto hope even in dark moments.

God is real.  Life is not only what it is in the  moment.  Please always hold on. Nothing is worth throwing your life away.  Nothing.

God is with you.

Start With A Star

start with a star

a little brighter than usual

flashing a lighthouse message

above scant trees.

is it that hard

to imagine?

you could be going somewhere else

than the errand you thought you'd choose

or was chosen for you:

a journey through purple darkness

beyond the Christmas card silhouettes

silk-screened across the indigo;

glitter on parchment representing snow

or starlight, take your pick.

and then a cold night.

you're in the fields or just at work;

not thinking of anything at the bus stop

and the light grows larger now

filling half the sky

and work grows dim.

start with a song.

you think you might have heard before

only, not like this, and not for Him

as if the notes had burst all bonds

and turned to gold around and through

your listening attuned to nothing else.

start with a feeling, almost a little jeweled

washed silver to gold and back again

and resin is singing too now

through all the winter trees

of gilded apples on the branches of the universe

you only thought you knew.

and life starting over with the Star.

mary angela douglas 25 december 2013

Necklace

could it be made of small stars

she asked the Fashioner softly

so that nothing could catch fire

in the vicinities

or carved from ivoried snows

to be worn in extreme cold, quarried

from a warmer rose, rosepetal stictched to

an even seam

even seeming like spring

at the earliest, set off

by pale green velvets,

the mazy motion of the trees.

I am setting off she prayed

on a journey that has no end.

make it from light, my Father

or wrists of rainbows

braclets of the miraculous

spanning the unshed tears,

the underpasses

overlooking the crevasse

over which I must pass

heart-rended, even without shoes

slipping on the pearl of Your shadow...

moon painted, bright beyond wonder

so that I may not forget You

mary angela douglas 24 december 2013

No Muted Merry Christmas Angels Sang

did they 

have a meeting earlier in the year

and not invite the rest of us

who still believe

all sugarplumed, lay plans to have no

muted Merry Christmas?

experimenting, I went everywhere.

I smiled; then I was welcome

speaking of this and that. 

Then I said Merry Christmas!

bonhomie scattered like geese

in flight before gunshot.

happy holidays they whimpered.

or, the same to you, I'm sure,

they sniffed.

wanting to remain cool in the world wide

cool club where God Knows Who

makes the rules; I never did.

my reputation for a Christmas song.

did I say something wrong

my inner child laughed.

oh let me say it louder then.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

PEACE.

GOOD WILL TO THOSE OF

GOOD WILL

on earth, on earth

quadrophonically now in

surround surround surround surround sound

in cathedral bells in neighborhood gingerbread;

white lighted snowfall lamplit candlelit knowing

Light has come into the world let me be Merry

and know why

and never be ashamed.

oh heralding angels weren't

oh, Christ the King

Christ the King

Christ the King

is chiming snow bright in the air

ring out my evergreen children everywhere

 mary angela douglas 22 december 2013

Orange

only one orange

is blazing like the sun

brought down to earth

only kinder.

no sunburn.

an orange wrapped like a present

a little hard to open

but when you do

isn't it the kingdom of orange

made just for you

orange orange

overfilled with orange

the soul spills over into laughter

orange through and through

orange peel remaining

you could file under Oh.

it's gone now.

and wish for another.

but that is asking for so much

when your hands still 

smell like flowers.

mary angela douglas 21 december 2013

Note on Poem: I haven't eaten an orange for over seven years.  It's complicated.  Difficult to ride the bus.  Difficult to chew the stringy ones on sale.  Easier to store frozen fruit and lighter to carry than a bag of them would be.  Today someone gave me a Christmas orange. And I wrote this poem to express the amazement I feel (and felt as a child) that one small fruit could hold so much joy. And bo so orange.  Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift of the Orange.

There Is No Death Of The Romantics

swans in the mirror of the soul

float on, having been banned from

post modern poetry.

where else would they go?

constricted and confined

condensed at the ballet to

save the audience time;

no longer needed at school
when slipping through the slit
of the Valentine box

wrapped in silver foil
decorated with red construction paper hearts
on white lace paper doilies, no more.

configured differently-

oh! not at all.

for they shone brilliantly

beyond the dress-circle diamonds of the

spectators who cannot guess now

when the clues are far too few

what they are missing.

over the footlights

swans in the mirror of the soul

drift on a wisp of

Pavlova, perhaps the

waters of Coole;

half-murmured in a dream

you've neglected to be transformed

your former poets mourn

and supplicate but you must be

dreaming

they say to you on the job and if they knew

they would disapprove of the Romantic

leaning of the ghostly scholar

poet, pianist holding out to you

unseen, too rich and variegated the

thread of what has been

cleaved clear in two.

no cream for the apple tart.

other ages darker than this

you think but cannot say

have known have known the

soft flutter of few stars,

alone above the trees and witnessed, then, that

the swans in the mirror of the soul

float on and exquisite as pearl by pearl

impervious to wars, cultural or otherwise-

to poets unlearning their trade
wild Beauty wild with grief

unraveling and undeterred.

mary angela douglas 19 december 2013;22 november 2014;28 december 2014