The Rose Garden, Green Shadows (Second Version)

stepping from the rose garden
did children learn to weep thistles
was their dreaming impaired

did the roses call after them in despair
in their soft rose voices everywhere
were all the toys

broken at once.the porch swing; and my wistera...
oh did the villagers stare
and shoo them from the  door for their disparity

then they slept out of doors
did the dream well run dry.
did their guardian angels cry

put on a show
with hand puppets
and show them where the berries grow

that they might not starve.
was day old day bread that hard
with pretend butter

I know but Im not telling
or spelling it out for you

who dont so much care.
I would not on a dare
produce for you

the one crystal shoe.
sweet God who saw them through
but there is an answer somewhere.

to the hardness of heart
toward those in the dark

there is the riddle raveled
on the way from here to There
and roses, everywhere.

renewed

mary angela douglas 20 october 2019

For Harold Bloom, Passing Away October 14 2019

the ghost of Autumn flits and you are no longer here but there

who thought it fit that you should cease now

has left the door open

and the classroom not so empty somehow

we wonder where you are

and hope you land

on the nearest star

and that you are welcomed

in the House of the poets you praised

your friends, mentors who passed away before you

the marvels of so many days, ages, epochs saved

oh nothing is in vain

despite all damning with reluctant praise

that you endured

how glad we are that you were here

and pray you're in a kinder sphere.

mary angela douglas october 19 2019

The Veil

how can the mind hold everything we knew
since we first opened our eyes in the world
and saw everything through mist

and yet they say we do. why can't we recall
the colour of the grass when we were two
remember what it felt like falling down in it

why is there a veil over so many things
if scientists say yes it is true, it is all recorded
somewhere.

so many feelings. for what we have passed through.
who's keeping the photographs from us.
is it we ourselves

not wanting to be overwhelmed in a sea of gargantuan
detail oh but even the least slant of the light
on any given morning as it fell

through the kitchen window oh well
what can I say I would give a kingdom for it today
with the chance

just once to say to the

shadows on the wall
I loved you all
oh tree in the wind back then

where are you
who saw me first begin.
and I saw you begin too.

mary angela douglas 17 october 2019

Things Should Be Translated

things should be translated as if from far away
because all our goodbyes cannot be said in unison
because the moon breathes differently than earth

as it turns, and diminishes as though it may
have only one tear left, only one silver phase.
how can the moon understand the earth

it is impossible. still it must be said somewhere
there must be a language for this.
for this and the watercolor way Spring begins

the way children feel stepping from pastel to pastel
over the young stones in the creek behind their home
home that is a phase too.

silvery it will fade it's own planet with  the moon 
or seem to. it was always that way in dreams
who could ever translate then

how could the children fall down so hard
as to disappear from their own yards
oh who can say this.

who can write this down
in a script like the doctor gives in writing prescriptions.
the heart cannot bear this.

so we stow the ancient valentines.
we walk among the pines
and notice all at once

frost at the root of it all
and all our words going away.
not knowing how to say anything

that will stop the fading.

mary angela douglas 15 october 2019

Ghost on Ghost, November In The Woods

ghost on ghost, November in the woods
and bubbling up through heavy mist
their voices little understood

I think I hear something of their blunted songs
and I drift on too.

we want to go to the beginning of the measure
to play it perfectly through
but there's no concert but the dew

the mold impenetrable fog
the sun trying to get through
to you in clouds of amethyst

a birthstone lost among the leaves.
how is it so easy to get turned around here
to be going around in the circle of yourself

a lonely treble and no staff at all

or the self you think you knew;you used to Be.
but we are vanishing banished through and through
because we loved the purple words best

and would not recant.
the ants are frozen in their small
huts of rust coloured sand

I think I know who I am again
the balletic poem turned out.
how lovely this illusion is

and every may be

while it lasts but the song is overcast.
only the plain remain.

we are not in the land we think we were
and all the leaves whirl up
and cover the sun.

mary angela douglas 14 october 2019

Oh, I Promise

to all those on the rack of uncertainty

at random hours of the day

who want to say finally in any

language that could be understood

why is the ground shifting ever and ever

under my feet;

what could have happened to the magic wood

my wishes vanishing under the cherry boughs.

how can this be withstood

the sudden breaks in the sentences

the crackle of twigs the ice storms flown in

the telegrams sent but none there to receive

the house lifting up on a dark wind

landing, set down abruptly just

Beyond

all, all the emerald cities until Then

so that you only say where,

where are you

and out of reach of

the skies so full of stars.

when will I feel again even the

wan sunlight on the path

maybe you asked

chilled in the colouring of leaves

deceived by every premise deserted by every belief.

oh I promise you that in the codes of God upended

suddenly it may be revealed:

the diamond eye of the storm.concealed

and everything that was torn

by His love mended.

mary angela douglas 14 october 2019

You My Metaphor Robed In Gold

for John Donne in his devotions

You my metaphor, robed in gold
My Light My Night
my new and old

my Spring My Winter
in repair
the ghost of Beauty

everywhere
though I am mocked on every side
and in my tears left to abide

I know that You my tower shall be
beyond the lies of mimicry
beyond the clique's door

clicking shut
beyond the fear of mold and must
my Diamond and my star removed

the witty marking
Christ's own fool.
one of an abandoned tribe

a poet seared
a friend denied
still I wait and not alone

where You remain
my only home.

mary angela douglas 11 October 2019

It's A Portable Poem

IT'S A PORTABLE POEM

it's a portable poem to sing to you

when you're sad

a portable wand to change things

when you're mad.

it doesn't ask much

it's magic, as such

and they won't even see it

to call out "contraband"

(that is, if you memorize it.)

it will only take a minute or two.

it can't be borrowed

it's just for you.

I hope it will make you instantly merry

it's light as air and easy to carry.

so you can have fun with it all the day through

with scissors and paste or maybe with glue.

it's soap bubble rainbowed through afternoon.

no matter what anyone does, or assumes.

you'll know it by heart.

and in your best shoes.

so Christmas come early and snow come on

and let all the churlish say once upon.

let ice cream be served

and chocolate cake too.

this poem is a party

inviting you.

mary angela douglas 10 october 2019

Though It Isnt Taught That Way

history is the winding of dreams of each dream
of each person the day you went away not knowing
you wouldnt return

but it isnt taught that way and so the children stir
uncomfortably in their seats as the candy coloured maps
come down, the mountains in relief

the map key I could never understand
where is the key that turns in  the lock of
the house that Jack built what is the ticking of time

what makes it rhyme inside of me
where is the two plus two of it where does it reside
it is not the signing of treaties

the deposition of kings and who was next in line
but it is taught that way when do we find it out
what makes it tick inside of us when we are new

on the scene when the grass is the greenest green
the sky blue as cornflowers how did they feel
does anyone know when they passed through

the mountain pass and I dont care how large the tracts were
when the territory was sold I want to know the flare, the
tally of the soul the soul Whitman cried

holding the sprig as Lincoln passed by no longer under
his own power the man of the hour but the one denied
like Christ denied; each person

the soul inside flaring up then going out
that is history more than what was exported
what came to your door in a midnight summons

with the choirs of angels when time gave out
like a worn out shoe or a hand me down dress and the soul stood up in its
sad magnificence to say each in its own way

I am going away it said inside of each of you
will say again when floating away I am saying goodbye
to all the inner countries I only half knew

I never knew or only half remembered
now I will see you as you are.

beyond the wagon wheels, the farthest Star.
and Bethlehem understood.

mary angela douglas 10 october 2019

For Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln is a shore I can never reach
tall among contradictions
with the speech of angels.

who is with Whitman
cannot look at lilacs again
ever the same way.

and so I contribute
my sprig too
having visited your monument

on a summer day
I dont remember anything else
except that it seemed

you could rise again from the marble
to say exactly what you said before
and be shot the same way.

mary angela douglas 9 october 2019

Kierkegaard In The Winter Snow

I think of Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard in the winter snow,
perpetually

turning his back on the early violets.
I think of him in a snow globe
on my desk

pacing to and fro or
loading his coffee with inordinate sugar
in one anecdote

accosting his friend in the street
with an outlandish coat on
scolding him for that.

oh Kierkegaard, where's your hat
I long to say suddenly because in the snow
globe the wind has knocked it off

so there he is hatless. 
and that's my judgement on him.
or the Danish wind.

I hear faint music

and then the music stops.
he's left his aesthetic phase
and changed all the locks

and I want to say

Remember Hans Andersen!
it isn't as gloomy as you think.
or anxious.

the ugly duckling rose to become

a swan.
but he remains melancholy
and I no longer have to shake

the snow globe in order for him
to feel
he is still forsaken

he is still forsaking everything
as a precaution,
but God.

mary angela douglas 9 october 2019

Vale Dicere Ave Maria

what if she never wanted
your pedestals of rosy clouds
the apotheosis of cornflower blue and 

the golden roses at her feet, the myrtle and the lilies sweet
painted by the mystic painters of later centuries

embroidered by Saints

Our Lady among cherubs
and the visionary

coronated by angels
or annunciated
amid the Italian cypresses

and the archways
in a formal view.

her name was Mary.
she bore Christ when
she was very new herself

the spring tide in her heart
was God alone and she loved wildflowers,
the sun. her household in a honeyed light

to be the only one up at night

the air after the rains.
why would she need

to be robed with such complications
to be lifted into starry names.
to become the subject of Latin hymns.

she bore Christ.
she was there with him from the first
of his very real life on earth.

Rilke's angel
cried: "Thou art the Tree."

she would have understood that.

but I am the one my mother called Mary.
why would you call me queen of the sea

she would have wondered mystified
at their veneration, o Ivory tower

oh gilded statues in the grand cathedrals

anywhere else instead
she would have said
I wanted to be to ponder the least thing.

why do they call me foreign names

I was only his mother.
I wanted a quiet space;
to be at home, to marvel at the small graces

at table, or sweeping the floors noting 
his little words at the beginning
honey on the page.

time to think what life had been or would have
without the rage of those who despised Him
cut down in his youth by ruthless men as it was foreordained,  yet

with Him so suddenly removed into an empty tomb

you could not name my pain
and then, with John I lived the rest. or tried to.
what did I need with the glorias

and the kingdom comes

when I was under his star.
my son, my Son.

mary angela douglas 7 october 2019;23 march 2021

Transcriptions (for the Piano)

these transcriptions of a bridal sky
where cliffs of pearl drop off into silence
and the clouds float with the moon

woven through an infinite loom
I have woven too,
in my fashion

these transcriptions
shading unto rose;
into the rose gold of a script so

calibrated, it has to be May with her gardenias
or April at the very least that it may be
music and never cease

with the treble of stars;
the sense that where you are
you will always be

nostalgic for the evenings
and the breeze itself

the souvenir now of what you felt then
passing the white flowering trees
passing the turbulence of the spring violins

at the conservatory and in the twilight practice hour

when everything has flowered  and is blue
unto the perilous beauty of the Unseen;
the peridotal fragments gleaming into emerald

and everything is jeweled and all at once
it's Heraclitean; it's the fairy tale in its
kaleidoscopic phase

through the grass lightly you slip
through all your days;

younger than then
in the morning, mourning dew
the pale birds flown.

mary angela douglas 6 october 2019

Someone Remembered Snow Cones in My Dream

to Ray Bradbury, for his story "To The Chicago Abyss"

someone remembered snow cones in my dream
a person I had never seen in real life
how funny I have often thought

the distinction between dreams and real life
except that in dreams you don't pay bills
or trudge up hills that make your muscles ache

but to get back to the snow cone
it was brought up in a casual way
and I knew out of everyone in the room

the dream room, I was the only one there
who knew why the man spoke of it and that it mattered
because he wanted to remember that

and not the original topic of conversation
which the dream did not remember either
in fact, some would call the dream remiss

and just for this

though I insist
blessed be the dream that makes allowances
where the most astonishing things are not off topic

off message or ever conceived as such
for much have we also wandered
in the realms of gold

taking all the side roads even after Keats
and it is meet after long drudgery to suppose

even to long

for any interposition at any time as though
we were children waiting for the assignment to begin when
suddenly

we were in the kingdom of roses we made up

my sister and I in all our summer waking
when dreams spilled out into daylight
for the taking and the fairy tale adjudged

it right for snows to fall on the rosebuds overnight

but I'm talking about a public scene
the venue for some purpose with the
carpet in style from other decades

the complimentary buffet
implied the working dream day
in any meeting room, let it be assumed glorious

for saints or angels to float down or chime
and for this to seem normal to

bypass the facilitator

and not to cause a flurry the children had
the snows come early, early Christmas too
and there was not one rule that could govern the skies

or put us wise to news reports breaking over us like waves
like waves

that meant to drown us
ah, to no avail.

mary angela douglas 5 october 2019

The Deepest Well

show me Father how to say this
turn the stones to flowers in their hands
that I may withstand

and the Word with me this withering world.
caught in a glance, a shrug, a grouping together
at the punch table

oh God if you are able in these smallest of things
to reign, sustain me here.
where they are not gathered to hear

but to condemn.
spare me the quenching then that in every nightmare veers
early in the evening

before the dawn appears as if to shutter it;
to mutter like ravens scattering shade.
how vaulted are the heavens and everything you've made

but they have made even the sky a jail
and launch into it
to capture the sun.

I have written this down as if I were the only one.
before I drown let the Word not waver on the waves
or be dispelled by a cackling spell

consigning Beauty to the deepest well.

mary angela douglas 4 october 2019

This Is The Unit On Words

this is the unit on words,
on words that explode like stars in the mind
like words, like stars at the end of time

this is the lesson on saying goodbye
but not to the images of light.
this is the unit on flight

broken down to trajectories;
broken down past the dictionary meanings

or rising above the words like glass
like diamond glass admired by the child
sunlit at the window

where the glass bottles shine in their
various their myriad colours
or tree fall at Christmas and glistening

this is the unit on listening
on not being listened to
on the sunburst words

by midnight tried and sentenced and suddenly
this is the unit on the pure
who hedge words inside

as if they were gold and the ark itself
who understand the word unsold
nor bartered in the business day

breaking all covenants.

this is the Word that holds sway
while pundits shatter it.
this is the unit on the words that mattered

scattershot and jeweled
that fall by the wayside dreamer
on his or her way to school

who will endure
past all units finally
past all misconstruing translated

past the rose hedges decimated
the fine castles obliterated
into

the pearl, indomitable alphabet
of God.

mary angela douglas 1 october 2019

It Wasn't A Breach Of Manners

here is a little bit what I think
making up jump rope rhymes
at the sink

Antoinette in a gown of gold
was your story really told
Antoinette in a wreath of pinks 

here is what I really think.
no one said how the poor people lived
keeping money in a sieve

eating toast without marmalade
barely even getting paid.
all you knew in a castle locked

was what they told you or did not.
what to wear with your new frock.
you had bread and cake besides.

how would you know the
courtiers lied.

you answered the riddle the best you could
merely seeking to be good.
wanting to improve their state

if they don't have bread, then they can eat cake.
how you were maligned my dear
by those whose motives weren't that clear.

no one told you how it is
you only wanted to assist.

still they mock you
in the grave
those still scuttling in Plato's cave.

mary angela douglas 28 september 2019

Will Anyone Think

will anyone think because you have found it
you, a mere girl at best an afterthought of God
newly sprung after the long rains

a mass of flowers

that it is really what it is a pearl of great distinction,
better for it to remain at sea or in the tidal basins free

and still enclosed

than to be found by you 
who can only give it greater obscurity

since it is you that found it
and not a king.
who could credit such a thing.

still you have it

in your pocket yet
or on your dresser with the dresser set,
a light perfume

a mirror into which you look to banish gloom
not at all vain.
what will remain of it

softly you ask of God
even though I found it in Your name
they strive to build on it to bury it under

an altar of mud
and I the mud streaked goose girl in the rain
not even a foot note in that history

of disdain.

mary angela douglas 28 september 2019

From These Dark Angels

Lord God of hosts deliver us
from these dark angels hovering near
ruling the precincts of our fear;

from tides we cannot see
but feel when we are afflicted unreasonably
despite all signs of progress in the West

despite the faith that we confess
invisible armies gather innumerably
and lay siegw.

you know of these by rank and each as each
we cannot see them
yet we feel

an unexpected gloom and powerless to wield
as you the right commands to sunder them in two.
let them be banished from this blue green earth

before the accomplished time
we are sick from the dearth of it all
and we are small

to fight against invisible things.
and we are Thine.
let your bright rings dapple the earth and sky

and ripple through it all
the music we first heard
from every leaf and bird

restore to us, o God we pray

in everything we think or say
the garden invincible
at first we thought we knew

would always be ours,
with You.

mary angela douglas 27 september 2019

To Rose Fyleman

I want to live in a fairy dell
though others tell me
it won't go well

that I'll be gone for 300 years
and come back when
it's all disappeared.

but what care I
where it's always spring
and I can live under a

sparrows wing
and fashion the dew drops
into bright rings

and live on berries
and never be queried
and Christmas could come

with every new sun
and snowdrops, sweet peas
whatever you please

we'll live in the past
and last and last
thinking up dreams

and heavenly schemes
to get there from here
in some other year.

mary angela douglas 27 september 2019