What If The Last Dream

what if the last dream comes to you earlier
earliest the one where you float among watercolours
barely off the ground in your own interior

ballets or at the keyboard shining of the piano grand
is music on the way in the flower filled winds
you don't know you don't know you say in school

each time the same answer
when they question who you are
as if this were on the curriculum

let that fragment fade.
and you hold autumns like a rosary
surely the splended sun will come

and rest among the trees
before the heart freezes over
God with us

toll the bells.

mary angela douglas 8 april 2018

Leaf Quiet And Moss Greens

leaf quiet and moss greens
translucent running of the stream
that is my looking glass

in an antique fairy tale
my reverie
when the clouds break ranks

and sing to me cloud songs
last summer's blazing
and I am made of shade

leaf quiet scarcely the stirring of the wind
I long for God to be my friend
and for the burnished afternoons

never
never to end.

mary angela douglas 6 april 2018

In Blue Evenings Disapearing

the ticking of time's quartz heart
in the Cinderella bell tower
rendered the pumpkin colourless

in blue evenings disappearing
the coach stalled
then home on barefeet losing,

the day in tatters
and prayers by the sparkling
in the moonlight tree

what is this to me they ask
with silken voices
only that time is melting

in my mind I look for vanished things
sometimes the edge of the angelic
gilds the afternoons

and I ask softly, God, Dear Lord
will it be soon I cannot find
a sign of crystal anywhere

or turning aside on

the white the stricken road can it
become so suddenly again, sheer
maytime's flowering.

mary angela douglas 6 april 2018

It's End Of The World Cloud-Beautiful

it's end of the world cloud-beautiful
it's the angels you name in your sleep.
the moment you stood on a childhood stage

trying not to weep.

or at the birthday party, consoled with litle pink cakes.
and light begins to tremble through half remembered trees
the kaleidoscope turning, the dolls all appeased.

the toy piano and the music box bears - at their ease
when we were friends with the roses and chilled Bose pears;
the creak in the attic stairs when the Christmas ornaments came

down
oh thank you, Grandfather

and later,
crepe paper bells  and the sweet repartee.
we're sweeping the glass of the comets away

entranced with the mystery of a day
like party favours unraveling
when the charms spill out

all around you.

mary angela douglas 3,5 april 2018

Trees Without Language

trees without language skies of unease
and yet there is something.
once again, unameable

and you must quiet yourself to hear
what doesn't add up in their calibrations.
green circuits whispering each to each

roots that reach deeper than we knew
beyond earth's core
there is an open door we whispered

in a childhood where we used to come and go
and I know then distinctly the trees were whispering 
it's not as if we're on the map or if we can find our way back

plotted on graph paper

before the forests close, a someting else inside glows
Tinkerbell light, a lantern through the hail storms
the slim chance we have someday to be heard

the last of the mercury dimes counted out
our secret love for the ruby throated birds their song their song

and we are on the shore where they will not come
to take our words away.

mary angela douglas 3 april 2018

Do They Cast Flowers There

do they cast flowers there on the waters
from receding ships you wondered
and does it mean something different

depending on what country you represent
and do the flowers sink or can they
stay aloft stay aloft

I said under my breath
weaving the kites of sorrow into my song,
all the golden ones

the little prayer flags fluttering
Lord, hear my plea

stay aloft forever
on the receding waters
my flowered wreath.

I did not deceive
I was not the deceiving one
and I will not be now.

mary angela douglas 2 april 2018

When You Have Been Away

when you have been away a long, long time
you will say, why did it all turn out this way
if I go back, will they remember me

are they even there.
are they even still
who they were then.

and it will seem to you through
sudden surmise how clouds
are also living on the ground

not just the skies
and disappear;though
year to year you send them mental postcards.

you're apt to choose the brightest hues
here's me beneath the turquoise sun
you lie, not feigning love;

they'll like this one, you'll smile to yourself.
taking one off the revolving shelf in the drugstore
and that one's their favorite colour.

but they've "moved on".in Time
becoming alien instead; instead of the ones you knew
though they think surely you're the strange one;

it's too true
that you send telegrams to who they were.
that won't go through;

you alone remain yourself
looking around to see what could be missing
in the world or your strange

part in it now and this is exile,
and I am alone with what I know
and cannot hold a single conversation about it

because, down to the last illusion,
they've forgotten it all.

mary angela douglas 2 april 2018

How Beautiful They Stand

how beautiful they stand
like ships beyond command
above forgotten lands

the clouds
and I am one composed
of the same clouds

or, I dreamed it so
being the dream child
in the glass

of the fairy tale winds
surpassing.
oh what will I see when I look last

and will these kingdoms come to pass
in the mirror they will offer me
above the vast the final seas

or will I vanish into these
murmured the sea maid as she shone
till the indigo waves closed over.

mary angela douglas 31 march 2018

Paper Airplanes

we made paper airplanes
unlike Leonardo's flying machine
they flew near the ceiling

with no frescoes
but we were happier there
when the moonlight streamed in

I'm not precocious
they told my friends
what I was I am

a girl with no plan
but does it really matter
only God matters

if only we can reflect
one fleck of Him
a rainbow to cover

the silver snail
that would be
saving a lot.

mary angela douglas 31 march 2018

Categories

we have been taught the categories
and so we know in what shoebox
to plant old stars, tinsel or the

waning moons.
to keep the memory of snow
old maps of renamed kingdoms.

small pianos in tune

the bit of amber and tracing paper
old skates, the first short summer camp trip
from home

could ages be longer.
here are old watches long run out of time
the things without rhyme or reason

the evidence we saved
of the days of festival.
but I am wondering

at the bottom of the stairs
where I left the other things
the signet rings

the faith the dream
that I need now
oh how will I find them how

who lose a little each day
the heart to claim them.

mary angela douglas 30 march 2018

.

Falling Off The Edge Of Sleep

it's like falling off the edge of sleep
we said in a story that we made up
to have something new for the

dolls to say and did they dream
we wondered well into summer
to the edge of the New School Year.

what else is it like
well the trees hold magic
turning green to orange and yellow

finally into red and the first thing
we do at school is to cut around
the leaf designs on construction

paper matching each shade
and paste the paper leaves
on our windowpanes

while outside, secretly
in every breeze
we sense somehow

at our paper harvests

the real leaves laughing
through the ice blue air;
thinking they are spared.

mary angela douglas 30 march 2018

Emily, It Is Getting Late (Second Version)

[for Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas]

for Emily Dickinson

Emily, it is getting late:
the blaze on the trees and
the blaze on the poems are one;

the snow clouds tick the towns away
and I am on my own to stare
at the wall that readily turns to stars.

I know that you would understand
the quatrains of this early moon
the open question of the wind

the quotidian you somehow find
an open window through which shines
so close at hand your own Sublime

and then I hear from distant years
a background music suitable to you
it’s something from Charles Ives*

that moves
over the same bent fields…

while in a golden age we think
we may have many years to see
but the maple’ s ensign warns us

you are nearer than
these silver riddles fluttering from your hands
we still can read:

inscribed with their own answers
as God’s may be – I’d like to think
He’s pouring over them again

tipping back His amethyst chair
as any fond Father would
but in my sleep

an unnamed orb keeps bleeding ivory words
and disappearing
as it did, (I think) so many times for you-

the lamp’s unlit…
and it’s nothing’s set upon the household candlestick now:
vivid for a nation or a world within a world;

within each secret’s secret self
to counter the miniature glorias set in pearl
you well remember as an infinite girlhood

since it was just you singing, singeing them…
I can’t dispel the sense of something blamed or
someone radiant lingering here

with somewhat more to say on these lost subjects…

I stand stock -still by the mossy door
where Beauty’s shadow seems to veer
and wonder only to myself

just who in the glittering days ahead
will comprehend
as if by heart-

as if they wrote the words themselves-
the least hue in your brightening palm
the gleaming instant caught out in surmise:

I seem to clasp,
so briefly, meadow-sweet-
and vastly-then, as now-

before the first
or the last snows of Poetry itself-

mary angela douglas 9-10 october 2011;rev. 29 march 2018; slight rev. 6 march 2021

*reference to Charles Ives ( American New England composer) musical composition: “The Unanswered Question” which he refused to identify.

When God Is Our Grief

when God is our grief
we wade for hours
crossing small creeks

or peering through
the crack in the blinds
in the whitest of dawns

praying stop the sun now
for dread has weighted shoes
somehow

sometimes

how can we move;
the least leaf on the tree
the last fo fall we seem

and yet still want to live
the contradiction out
when God is our grief

and tears drown in a sieve.

mary angela douglas 28 march 2018

Early Rilke

music, foundation of empires I dreamed then
in the rattling days suddenly a clear space rose,
and everything fades except a single terrace

of night, this fabric of stars;.lost,
coming into view
where are you he hears his angels call

the violins in the yard

spilling out of windows wending through
the early lillacs' scent.
he answers nothing

while the universe forms words slowly
in a drift of mint.
I am lined with stars he cries

what am I to do with them now

mary angela douglas 28 march 2018

The Kitchen Maid In The Garden

[from a song cycle on Hans Andersen's The Nightingale]

a jeweled bird is their constellation;it won't be mine.
mine is the plain one that no one can unwind
or wind

the free one on the small winds, fee simple;
it binds my heart's disconsolation
on the clock without hands

the lilied one and skims the
surface of departing light
whenever I leave or think I can

what is continually mourned
and alternately, soothed.

we walk through the ghosts of music
my shadow and I bemused
through the long grasses, by the river

and it is nightfall falling again
staining the viridian grasses blue
oh blue, the colour where I hide

to hear the slight bird sing
to the ghosts of music not of enterprise
and they are all weeping, then.

mary angela douglas 28 march 2018

Down At The Not So O.K. Poetry Corral (Second Version)

It's filtered through clouds

through cinematic trees
rustling in old black and white

scenes you can't quite frame but you feel a something there
as of angels waiting to be revealed and can't compare it
to any other feeling you could "share with the others

what is this poem about" the lecturer begins
candy sweet taskmaster of the seen
and be seen

with the old familiar stick
pointing to the rules for this
they've just come up with

by scary consensus: today we're
writing haiku about macrome
and you say, collywobbly longing to be at home

catching those flicks, and not this flack
excuse me I'll just go get my hat, my hatpin

I can see Im at the wrong address
and so you step out backwards
holding eye contact with what?

with whom, the voice resumes
its judgement; j'accuse, you confess
(you know the process)

to not being overfond of turning
verbs into nouns and finding it all
actionable

I didn't sign up you say
I'll just be on my way

and the clasp on your patent leather
pocketbook breaks, spilling the contents
(only happens when you're nervous

oh how can I deserve this)
on the floor while everyone roars
too many metaphors

in not so silent reading
of your just too metrical breath
and you feel tucked inside

a nightmare pocket
where you'll have to reside
while the composition of your soul

is openly discussed and decided on
in committee

you don't know who I am am am
your voice flows down a retrograde canyon.
out of hand land

with few wildflowers, a rusted out pail

such a becoming jail...
and you wake up shaking
the poem still iridescent in your head

they wanted to strangle.
from every angle.;
until it was Dead.

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Down At The Not So O.K. Poetry Corral

It's filtered through clouds
through cinematic trees
rustling in old black and white

scenes you can't quite frame but you feel a something there
as of angels waiting to be revealed and can't compare it
to any other feeling you could "share with the others

what is this poem about" the lecturer begins

candy sweet  taskmaster of the seen
and be seen

with the old familiar stick
pointing to the rules for this
they've just come up with

by scary consensus: today we're
writing haiku about macrome
and you say, collywobbly longing to be at home

catching those flicks, and not this flack
excuse me I'll just go get my hat, my hatpin

I can see Im at the wrong address
and so you step out backwards
holding eye contact with what?

with whom, the voice resumes
its judgement; j'accuse, you confess
(you know the process)

to not being overfond of turning
verbs into nouns and finding it all
actionable

I didn't sign up you say
I'll just be on my way

and the clasp on your patent leather
pocketbook breaks, spilling the contents
(only happens when you're nervous

oh how can I deserve this)

on the floor while everyone roars
too many metaphors
in not so silent reading

of your unmetrical breath

and you feel tucked inside
a nightmare pocket
where you'll have to reside

where the composition of your soul
is openly discussed  and decided on
in committee

you don't know who I am am am
your voice echoes down a retrograde canyon
with few wildflowers, a rusted out pail

such a becoming jail...

and you wake up shaking
the poem still iridescent in your head
they wanted to strangle.

from every angle.;
until it was Dead.

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Identity Is The Music (Second Version)

identity is the music

the fingerprint swirl in clay
the living imprint, still,

of a bygone day.
the player piano roll
now on display,

the sunset repetitions.
slight alterations
of the way you felt one May

there you are under the willow
and your harp at bay
mute in a mermaid affliction

with nothing you can say.
my identity. the trees whisper
when their own leaves fall

but this is not a headline.
or the writing on the wall
nor the cause celebre by politics fed

the boring beast, just released,
generic peace.

this is what orpheus meant,eurydice
in the Kingdom of the Dead
and you who think it is in

the trending ink or you're on the brink
of the stagelit prize
don't understand don't understand

that it's all lies.
identity is the music
and not the polemical stand.

visionary, on the faraway Strand

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Identity Is The Music

identity is the music
the fingerprint swirl in clay
the living imprint, still,

of a bygone day.

the piano player roll
now on display,
the sunset repetitions.

slight alterations
of the way you felt one May

there you are under the willow
and your harp at bay
mute in a mermaid affliction

with nothing you can say.
my identity. the trees whisper
when their own leaves fall

but this is not a headline.
or the writing on the wall
nor the cause celebre by politics fed

the boring beast, just released,
generic peace.

this is what orpheus meant,eurydice

in the Kingdom of the Dead
and you who think it is in
the trending ink or you're on the brink

of the stagelit prize

don't understand don't understand
you are not wise.
identity is the music

and not the polemic stand.
visionary, on the faraway Strand

mary angela douglas 26 march 2018

Still

we would be decoding the skies
if only we had known
there would be maps

that lied: here is water
where there was none.
later. reading in school

this is how the Indians knew
a hard winter was on its way
if only we could remember

what was the sign.
and people will misinterpret what we say
and shard like disappear

into an inner wounding

and duel with nothing
and call it won.
and I will sigh for the days to come

oh let them come,
anyway.

we still have God.

mary angela douglas 22 march 2018

After The Japanese, To The Memory Of The Imagists

one night while children slept
it began to rain flowers.
it rained flowers all night

and they stepped out in their
petal like dreams, their hands
cupped like flowers the snow

skiess filled up, like the cups of
lilies. this was music
the monologue referred to

itself and we are on the stage
that moonlight made, is making.
we are the dream of the flowers

and we will not be the same.
being now the imaginary denizens
of a flower kingdom, far away.

mary angela douglas 21 march 2018

Somewhere The Hills Were Blue

I remember somewhere the hills were blue
in the distance, shading to violet
when it rained they receded to watercolours

and we sang about them then.
we were young then
shading into blue ballads

and loved the fairytale where the heroune put on
her gown of gold, embellished with the sun
and splendidly shone.

asking nothing but to live among bill hills
that shaded into violet
and then became embroidered

with the rains.

mary angela douglas 20 march 2018

A Plan For Making It Through All On Your Own

maybe they want the beautiful to disappear
so that they may rule and reign, the trolls,
present under every bridge and you

must pay their fee.
or stay at home.
how often then would we long

for the cloak of invisibility

at any birthday, under the Christmas tree
welcomed
or on the list of the required

school supplies.along with the protractor
the pencil case that slides open.
and the cray pas.

but aboveground we were too visible a target.
how do roses grow I thought in this cold climate
why do not all castles sink at every nod and wink

at the dubious eyebrow raised in the
nightmare madrigal. near graduation
You are on the brink they say

of the life before you.
but you know
they're out there under the

bridge construction going on
all the time out on highway 101
just waiting for you, the trolls

near the office park where you will work

for some one's professional smirk to
grow smirkier while you toil and
where you must learn again and again

not to depend on accolades.or good reviews
just be glad that you are you that God is nigh
still making it through

and safe across the bridge again by nightfall
behind your rose clabbered walls
small but free

reading about invisible kingdoms

lost continents where nothing like this
is required of you.beyond merely blooming.

mary angela douglas 20 march 2018

Forever Unable To See The Skies As They Were

after reading Rilke I thought now we are
embroidered on his far distances, not our own,,
the encroaching stars

the angels at Eden
where it all burst into bloom
Rilke, the trees whispered then

and the wind arose the interstellar
space the unutterable bridge.has flowered between us:
the collapses endured in childhood, winged.

oh how will we sing this, forever translating hymn
his song upon song enfolded
vast, petals of the Rose...

infolding now in us, but first,
in him.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2018

For Stephen Hawking

perhaps he made up for us a little

who waste so many chances
to even look at the sky

complaining in the traffic-about-
the sun in our eyes-
in all his wondering whys

his looking back at the broken picture puzzle cracked as
on a vast unchartered track, an endless spiraling,
diamonded, past what anyone else would do

should the thought even occur to them
star mapping Time, first breath christening
and paradoxical flowering into the

personally catastrophic and then, to begin again
as if it were music and the very first bar
picking up the golden thead no one else perceived

and leaving everything but his mind as collateral
for all thieves and enforced loitering, demented roadblocks
as perhaps the price to pay for meddling with the known

conclusions of those who own the prize at the moment
and will not let it go
how odd that he only burrowed farther on

as if he nested then among the stars
there being truly no alternative
and the faraway look in his eyes hardening

crystalized into
the day before the day before..into a shoal of light
no equations of the lost but a firmer step

where for him there was no ground possible
forming the formulated never yet conceived
in syllables no longer couched

in his own human voice
and circumspect
without real wings

there being no other choice;
shutting out all the noise of the self
pitying possibilities

ever more thickly befalling
deformed in the outer world
yet still his bow was bent and the golden

arrows flew so straight
past all anyone knew or could acknowledge, calculate

such a fate he had! and acceleration

the riddle more and more beautiful as he
climbed, nay, crawled toward the summits
oh angel I will not let thee go

except thou bless me
to grasp the fantastic hold he had on measuring
what couldn’t be measured they said

once they glimpsed he already had
and were sore amazed
oh let him be laid to rest on a boat of stars

and rowed on the magic waters
home.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2018

For Stephen Hawking

perhaps he made up for us a little
who waste so many chances
to even look at  the sky

complaining in the traffic-about-
the sun in our eyes-
in  all his wondering whys

his looking back at the broken picture puzzle as
on a vast unchartered track an endless spiraling,
diamonded, past what anyone else would do

should the thought even occur to them
star mapping Time, first breath christening
and paradoxical flowering into the

personally catastrophic and then, to begin again
as if it were music and the very first bar
picking up the golden thead no one else perceived

and leaving everything but his mind as collateral
for all thieves and enforced loitering, demented roadblocks

as perhaps the price to pay for meddling with the known
conclusions of those who own the prize at the moment
and will not let it go

how odd that he only burrowed farther on

as if he nested then among the stars
there being truly no alternative
and the faraway look in his eyes hardening

crystalized into
the day before the day before..into infinity
no equations of the lost but a firmer step

where for him there was no ground possible

forming the formulated never yet conceived
in syllables no longer even couched
in his own human voice

there being no other choice;
shutting out all the noise of the self
pitying possibilities

ever more thickly befalling

deformed in the outer world
yet still his bow was bent and the golden
arrows flew so straight

past all anyone knew or could acknowledge, calculate
such a fate he had! and acceleration

the riddle more and more beautiful as he
climbed, nay, crawled toward the summits
oh angel I will not let thee go

except thou bless me
to grasp the fantastic hold he had on measuring

what couldn't be measured they said
once they glimpsed he already had
and were sore amazed

oh let him be laid to rest on a boat of stars
and rowed on the magic waters
home.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2018