White Buffalo Annunciation

[to my one quarter Cherokee beloved adopted Grandfather, Milton Barkus Young, (and legal Guardian), the only grandfather I ever knew...who, with my grandmother Lucy Young, raised me]

I saw the white buffalo pearl misted through the snows

parting the winds on either side of him, come to the forefront

through the archival blizzards: turn for a moment and stare

for that moment into the lens of my dream camera.

what can it mean I dreamed the winters away

unable to shake his hoar frosted image, blue lavender mirage startling  as if all the white dwarfed stars had grown suddenly large together melting

over Bethlehem and with the snow angels

filling the entire, the entire, the universal skies

because somewhere a stable in poor outline

sketched itself where the holy one was born

even in white-out conditions:

etched on the retina, one living lingering Tear

withstands the pale

accumulation of the eidetic years

until the first green of a new spring sprouted and the

prairie winds were ruffled, warm and the clouds too

painted in pale pink.we longed for, never to leave.

Long he stared seeing past us all a something impossible

to put into words: coming from or going back into

a white eternity commensurate with

his own purpose and yet, not belonging to him finally

but to a  Mind we could not fathom

though we stood there forever waiting for the mystery

to resolve itself into a whiter music;

the tribes disbanded,

streaming into the auroras

yet coming through to us, somehow from one photographic plate from the long ago perhaps flecked with too ancient starlight, transferred (but how?) to another, revealed, over Time, time lapsed to those who only heard of him

second, third hand, maybe, if at all.

how the bright suns' pall in comparison

left their astonished planets behind when

I saw the white buffalo in the great blizzards of the past shake his head and then the sound of bells and the mists enveloping- and he was gone

we drift in the after sadnesses

mary angela douglas september 16 2014

Kitchen Drawer

tiny striped swirled candles in the kitchen drawer

mixed in with twine, packets of purple zinnia

Burpee seeds, S&H Green Stamps to be traded in for:

modern lamps, old clocks, Aladdin's treasure?

maybe I dreamed that birthdays could come at

any moment, unannounced and for this we also

always had extra candles for the cakes if not

for emergencies because that would have been

the real emergency, the dolls agreed with us on

this point: to present a pink cake with no candles on it.

like Everest with no flag. like church with no stained glass.

like no colours ever again in the world that seems to you still

as it did then

a place, a kitchen drawer of dreams

to rummage in, after school...

mary angela douglas 16 september 2014

Fairytale Capitals Guard The Chapters

fairytale capitals guard the chapters

and from them fall pink blossoms scattered

applewhite in natural light or some other

lamps are lit in far off rooms

where the evening comes in through the windows

in powder blue and it's almost taffeta

the rustling of pages in firelit corners everywhere.

swans down floats down from the far off spaces.

intermittent starlight, firefly passages twine about

lost summers. do the children wear lemon well?

their mothers discuss before ornate mirrors we never saw.

I like to think on later battlefields or waiting at home

for the ax to fall, for the last letters ever on earth

tied in apple green ribbons

those children grown were comforted

by these scenes

mary angela douglas 14 september 2014

My Wildflower Poems, Are You Weeping A Skylit Blue?

[in the sincere hope of The Resurrection for all our poems and works of art (as for ourselves)]

my wildflower poems, are you weeping a skylit blue?

or are your windy petals strewn

only as mauve

as your own particular sunset

anyone walking there could crush

without thinking of it, really;

in the fields, far from the main roads

where the golden coaches pass.

or are you made of glass

and do you make little rainbows on the wall or on

the curtains when I close them?

o may you never live long enough

in the apples to oranges world

to be severely compared where the griefs are.

will you close at last and turn into the soil

you came from?

daisy centered, yellow as bumblebees, fuzzed-

or furled like roses, one by one:

curled with the elder ferns,

composing a single perfume

so beautiful, after long rains have come.

and after a while, not knowing enough

to be fearing

will you bow your heads as if to say

through His disarming snows, 

it's lovely, this way of disappearing

mary angela douglas 10 september 2014

Blackberry Station

oh in the hinterlands, shadowlands of poetry didn't you dream there was a train that ran from perfect land to perfect land and one of them, was blackberry station.

next stop.  bright in the sunshine cooked in summer on the bush not even walking distance; just there when the doors close behind you, ready to pluck.

the doors close behind you, the closing bell rings.

you want to live at blackberry station forever and maybe

God takes notes for future reference building a case for you.

by handfuls it says and with no stomach ache later.

a house near the station, three steps away with lavender eaves. and whispering trees, a small sign painted by hand

this way, to Blackberry Station...

a dairy nearby that hand delivers cream.

mary angela douglas 5 september 2014

Note on poem: after I wrote this poem I looked for blackberry station online and found out that there was/is? such a place in Kane County Illinois.  I even found an historic map of it.  Also a country store bears that name.

This poem came from a memory of always looking for apartments by the metro lines in D.C. when I lived there and never being able to afford them so in the poem I made up a place to live (even if only in Heaven, if only) where there are many mansions that had blackberry bushes near the train station.

When I was in a state of near homelessness, imminent eviction I imagined being able to survive by eating berries growing on the bushes near a train station and riding all day on scrounged money and sitting all day under flowering trees with the few books I could carry with me.

I was also influenced in part to write the poem by several episodes of the twilight zone, the ones most heavily laced with Rod Serling's nostalgia for the small N.Y. town he grew up in.

And of course, I also love blackberries to distraction.

I Do Not Know The Guelder Rose, The Bracken's Rain

[to Emily Bronte]

I do not know the guelder rose,

the bracken's rain that darkly falls;

the thistled word; the whistling

of strange storms around

the eaves of others' houses.

I sang, but I could never own

the milkmaid songs;

the jewels flung out by handfuls

in the throstled woods.

and I could not curtsy

in a velvet gown to those

whose towns I could not pronounce:

knowing that if I settled there

they would not bring me

cups of sugar; load me with presents

and it not even a feast day.

why, I wondered, is it so?

because I've not a guelder rose,

because I only call them fern

that curl around the creek beds?

I learned another English-

spare me yours, I said.

they looked clear through

and thought me dead.

I do not know the guelder rose

I said and said.

forgive me for such

small things neglected.

I know a story where one

rose plucked in snows

brought misery to the dearest.

even so, four rose bushes

come to mind in simple rain

and live forever where my

grandfather planted them

in our backyard and in my heart.

and I am not ashamed.

;

mary angela douglas 4 september 2014;rev. 5 september 2014

To Jean Redpath

[and to my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas]

"Fled is that music-: Do I wake or sleep?"

John Keats, Ode To A Nightingale]

fled is the dream past dream on the clock of waking;

tulip-cupped the moon where the starry snows are flaking.

when will I awake in the rooms of before, not after?

silver, laughed the trees but they are gone

where the sun creaks like old swings on the playgrounds.

after song is evensong, afterthought is all,

in pearl bright slippers.

and the sunsets crowd: mere thread 

through the needle of the last hour

shadowing the pear trees in the fairy story.

count, king by king and it's away

sigh the milk bright; wept the sailors

lost to executions now;

unread, wrote the poets in the frost of

windowpanes...the music drifts..

I'm going door to door selling all the flowers

out of my mind and orphaned from the business world

and late for lunches wrapped in wax paper;

the jam smudged bread.

these songs in my head oh

nebulae, almost cried the child in the crib

with the orange coverlet;

dream, sighed the clouds and took her home;

is it too late for conversations?

that have scattered the cranberry hills,

my heart- where it's all flood tide for the

brides with lilies in their hands:

the songs at her command

on the cusp of lavender and in the purpling dark

she used to know.

and here they leave you (all your songs)

and you don't know why yet

where the gold and the silver leaves 

have fluttered fluttered down

unclasping the fairytale branches

that scar these skies...

skirling, the wanderer wandered

and far from the rose red lanes.

the voice of mists may falter:

the Song, remains-

mary angela douglas 1 september 2014;

[last four lines in italics added september 2, 2014;

rev. 9 october 2014]

Is God A Vending Machne, A Juke Box?

is God a vending machine, a juke box?

you put your quarters in and

expect a reply

ice cold, candy crunched, potato crisped

the right song only and if not,

something gets kicked.

and the multifoliate coloured clouds

still give no rain so they complain

His gem starred light malfunctions

and in the breezeways through

His emeralds scatter

the winds over the plains.

He hears the broken refrain:

open the screen doors

all the windows you can

and breathe it all in

or watch it blow away and

try to understand if

it's  your fate to be, only utility utilized:

a vending machine, a juke box all aglow

in tubular neon pink and green

a something on the scene

or not at all.

what lies under leaves, or snows.

a flick of the wrist on a kaleidoscope

grown old,

a something kicked?

Ask Him.

He knows.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2014

A Christmas Card From Me To You (A Little Early)

[to the children when they're well again, forever]

"we shall meet on that beautiful shore."

-Old American hymn, In The Sweet Bye and Bye

(sung by Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and generations...lbut most beautiful when sung by Dolly...)*

In Heaven's toyshop we may see

some things we missed

on Christmas Eve:

or Christmas morning it may be

whenever you woke up to see

a something bright but something missed

I made a list and this is it:

the rosy doll in pink, not blue

the bracelet bright as morning dew

the little chair and table set

the playhouse, tree house, I forget

what was it that I wanted then,

only to play oh, let's pretend

and there's no price at all for that

not even now and I think that

if we imagine we can see

the whole world with a Christmas Tree

then there'll be stars in every sky

and no one left that has to cry

or has to wonder wonder why.

and wishes will come thick you know

as candy coated sugar snows

and bowls of fudge and icing too

we'll lick the spoon and when we're through 

play King and Queen of gum drop lands

dispensing gifts on every hand

and breathe in balsam, fir and pine

and feast on snow cream so refined

and find there's freshness in each day

and cherry bright, find things to praise

with angels ringed with holly, glad

and no one will be tired or sad

we'll light the candles evermore

and drift in boats to golden shores

we sang about when we were young

and Christmases had just begun!

mary angela douglas 30 august 2014;rev. 2 september 2014

Note On The Poem:

*You can find this beautiful hymn (In the Sweet Bye and Bye) sung by Cash, Parton, Nelson (individually) on You Tube, if you wish, in slightly different versions..It's on the Cash album "My Mother's Hymn Book".  I also thought of the song "The Mother and Child Reunion" by Paul Simon..and of all the parents who lose their children too early from cancer and for other reasons- there is a reunion in the Forever and a Heaven where all disappointments will be transformed into eternal joy.  I believe this with all my heart.

The Sweet Bye and Bye (also spelled, The Sweet By and By, bye and bye, in any case meaning, in a short while (as in after our relatively short sojourn on earth...) is not a cathedral song (though I love those too, especially all the carols).

It is a song sung from time immemorial in the out of the way tiny American country churches under the shade trees when people gathered to comfort themselves after country hardships with the vision of the hereafter when the "circle [would] be unbroken".

This is a deep theme in American old hymns and gospel tunes and when people make fun of Christianity I just feel oh you don't know how heartfelt these feelings are and how they get passed down from generation to generation and how I feel when I remember hearing my great grandfather (Mr. W. R. White of Prescott, Arkansas) whom I never met wanted Nearer My God To Thee played at his funeral, his favorite hymn.

If you find on dvd or VHS the beautiful film The Trip to Bountiful (taken from Horton Foote's play) and starring Geraldine Page ,check the opening scene with the girl running through the Texas fields of bluebells while the hymn Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling is sung in the most heartfelt ethereal and homesick for Heaven way I have ever heard.  It will make you weep no matter what you think of Christians.

Or even if you don't think of them at all.

Ex Nihilo

expelling world, evicting world, convicting world o

shackling world, tackling world, battling world,

nitpicking world, dog sicing world, restricting world,

shape shifting world, tock ticking world, shoplifting world and

grifting world, back stabbing world, kidnapping world and

hacking world, child smacking world, crime ridden world,

nickel diming world,  back room gossiping world,

target practicing world, snip-snaping world oh sassing world, dream crushing world, soul pinching world, heart clenching

analyzing world, paralyzing world,

rule making world for heart breaking, world

and ticketed, picketed, bigoted, get a gig,

spiteful world, and flight filled world

and look out for your own alone, brickbat

the hoarders world, the loner's world,

eye-rolling world, sad, scorning world,

shyster world and meister world, 

skimming world, wild grinning world, complaining world,

inflaming world, oh spiteful world, and frightful world,

fight spoiling world, fake toiling world,

pocket lining world, maligning world, kick a friend in the

gut, while lying world- declining world, silly, hiring world,

who's the next one we can be firing world, expiring, world, 

accusing and recusing world-

who called you out from

nothing with the pure word:

Light?

mary angela douglas 29 august 2014

The Best Book Ever

[in honor of anyone who ever felt they needed just one more book(may this imaginary book you won't find in any bookstore or library meet all the requirements and give you peace)  or- maybe you should write the perfect book yourself!] 

in the beginning, golden scriptures, a bird's-eye view of Heaven with crystal ceilings- obscure fairytales

you haven't read yet,  inscribed on pond lilies; fleeting 

passages like window snows at Christmas; hand stenciled-

stained glass window pane dreamed up  by shopkeepers

and so that the soul

says o! 

angel choir illuminations lidded with tissue papers

not to scar the heart, the heart fluttering the pages for something- something -a whiff of new cut grass, perhaps, deep legends, rose-leaved, carved out of ivories

made for a queen in secret, 

with pale green ribbon markers.

antique as rains, the leather; new fielded lavender with matching illustrations like a Spring outfit; recipes for huckleberry pies with the corresponding 'picture-perfect' and then it's a pop-up pie, oh my! 

and it's all coming true

and here's a slice for you! 

(with ice cold strawberries....) 

mary angela douglas 24 june 2014;rev. 29 august 2014

To The Moonbyrd, Wandering

we will leave amethyst candies by the night porch

and farther, crowned with may, beyond the moon-splashed grasses stray for the moonbyrd who has flown high now

and lo! above the rose gardens, 

gated against our sleep-walking...

mystic mystic moonbyrd

pecking the peridot leaves off the trees

why have you flown

dressed up in chalks against the

purple impenetrable

backdrop, masquerade of our old summer night.

didn't you like your flutter nutter sandwich? 

you will be lured by our candies anyhow, back to

your open cage of light to stay

silly moonbyrd, cousin of firebirds, trailing

pure rubied escapades, feathering the dream skies

or emerald sonorities, someone

else would have said.

I don't know them.

don't eat all the candy candy

sang someone's little brother

it's the bait but I said

it will be snowing candies, soon, 

for the moonbyrd, don't you think?

we scanned the Christmas skies.

and it is nightfall: tennis shoes soaked

up dew and we miss the measured moonbyrd,

moonbyrd's blink of ancient rainbows 

slowly revealed, resolved? and we sing

old railroad songs to coax you

learned in school and listen faintly: 

is it angel choirs, who must know where you are? 

and echo you back oh listen hard for

the parti-coloured shrieking of the gleaming moonbyrd

we stayed up late for, as if you were,Christmas.

all by yourself oh won't you try? 

we want you to

come home and live in our room

with the Art Supplies

cease foraging for meteors

by the coloured chalks scattered on

the floor and we will sing to you

(if we can), the sweet night through

and feed you the candies of pure goodness

wrapped in cream.

drift in and out of sleep, my wonder.

were you coloured by hand? 

hopscotched- out of sight-

not once demystified.

we'll tread the angely hallways

back to sleep not tracking the mud

from the rose beds, ever.

dreaming, my wonder, 

only you are free

mary angela douglas 6-7 april 2014; rev.29 august 2014;

rev. 9 october 2014;2 november 2021

Note on the Poem: I wrote this poem just minutes after seeing a lovely Academy Award (1959)  cartoon entitled 'The Moonbird' by John Hubley (and then altered it nine times as if it were a costume for a Christmas pageant, you stubborn moonbyrd poem!) The soundtrack to the cartoon is comprised of his two children in the backyard talking of this and that.

And I am spelling it this way, the wrong way you maybe said but that I think is how the moonbyrd would spell it or the children, at least, in my poem who looked for it.  

Call it a variation if you want to, (variant?)  spelling.  who knows. haha.  only the moonbyrd knows...

My Music Box, Have They Killed You?

my music box, have they killed you?

-I'm alright. I just can't finish the tune

the way I used to...

and I heard a broken bird chirp.

somewhere, a ceramic flower bloomed;

half, hidden, would panoramas in small

easter eggs spill lavish tears?

well, they did the best they could.

in the china painted grass.

revolving in-place, the castles,

carousels stood

just as pink and blue,

a little less crenellated.

maybe, has it really been years?

a year is an orbiting tune

she almost chimed,

played through.

my stars are few.

I cried.

oh bandaged music

split clear through

how will I hear you now

from a chirring wilderness

bleeding a fractured song

on the hand hooked rug

and its gardens

mary angela douglas 28 august 2014

Indigo

[[f all the seas were ink...

Mother Goose rhyme]

ink has spilled,

flowed into a sudden darkness.

the ink has spilled

there's nothing left to write

except to you

on a  very thin thread of what remains

but the thread

is gold, I said

though there was no record

I said anything at all

oh who will look into this for us

when feeling's all eclipsed, when

ink has spilled all over the world

the ink has spilled the poets go

into shock

who will patch the moon

the little stars

the bruise on the Sun...

when all the shadows run together,

viewed as one

then how can the answers flee

when every border shows

no margin for our errors-

the ink has spilled

coating the seas

coating the far distances

come, Oh Lord

oh write to us In Light.

and still the rivers of our spilled ink

our indigo weeping

mary angela douglas 28 august 2014

Dream, She Sighed And Dipped Her Wand In Starlight

dream, she sighed and dipped her wand in starlight

over the castle, the drawbridge, moat and all.

dream, she cried, a long, long time

and cast the scuttling days aside

all chandeliers must dim

and Time itself.

above the seeming waste of years

they slept.

beyond the reach of gossip, now and

untold calumny. a Kingdom preserved

beyond the stir of battle. a message

sealed in wax and waxen leaves that grew

and roses thorned to keep intruders out.

one day they will waken.

one day, to take their kingdom back

renew their crowns and joy itself will reign.

but now, sleep on through the winds and rains.

cloud breath suspended in the cold , cold air

promising only, snows

mary angela douglas 26 august 2014

I Saw The Lights Go Down On Vivid Lines Written For Heart's Ease

I saw the lights go down on vivid lines written for heart's ease

and not to please the kings, the courts I saw the curtain close

and my soul on oblivious waters: ships without sails, clouds

without moons, music leaving the rooms forever.

caw like this like this the crows told the children of Eden

seizing the stage, darkening the skies, removing the

shine from apples, stars, blossoms...

He decreed in love, for love's sake, alone

we're losing time, mourned the tappers on their keys

revising everything

productively, and minimizing, mimicing laconically

filling the moat with tears and no one could cross over;

filling the coffers of their circuses. what is gold said the Soul you shifted out of sight in your modernity to please

the new kings and their courts, you thieves-

to burnish your spot in the spotlight

how you've kept up with trends.

but some remember:

there's one more spinning wheel in the kingdom;

words were cherished once, we will defend defend

the lovely prayers you say,unsay

but Keats said " as if a rose should shut and

be a bud again", our flowering language cannot

be unsaid though you have stripped the 

elaborate Tree and poets left for dead who

died for Truth or Beauty, it's the same said

Emily whom you have shamed

and opened the dungeons for those

you banned from your magazines, your wilting coteries-

who loved these banished snows, the bright veil lifted

over the Unseen, the mysteries, the lavish dreamed.

now forward thinking teachers scold when we quote them,

critics mock, you're not accessible

but they were lent by saints who went before.

what have you done with them?

who let you through the door and

where have you thrown them overboard

I cried, alone, bereft-

oh what is your disease they said

because I mourned diminished Beauty

nobility trod down. regardless, I raved on

they're murderers ringing the curtain down

and locking up the Muse, key in their pocket,

satisfied-

and winning awards for this?

-and those of us who know what you have done:

decry decry- until we die

your buying up of the bruised wings

and selling, selling everything

making a splash and not in Icarian seas...

mary angela douglas 26 august 2014