Before the Good Samaritan Came

far from all exhortations let me live

close to the cooling streams You made

far from the clanging bells that cannot save

far from the endless blind judging the blind.

let me in fields of green reside and in the shade

nor face the smiles that unmade all You made

nor face the weather vaned who call and call on your sweet Name

but who when I call for the least injury

cannot be found at all.

mary angela douglas 14 august 2020

To Anyone Writing Now In The World

anyone writing now in the world

famous or not I want to say to you

please don't let them reduce your work to one required theme

you know what I mean or

to any theme at all. its your bread.

you have the right to butter it the way you want.

to put jam on it or not.

to drip the honey of time on it deep amber drop by drop.

don't let them quell you.cast a spell on you so that you are down

to one word only and chirp woodenly like a broken bird

politics politics politics

what do we need with a trillion more books on one harping theme

commanded as if by unappoinited infantry.

we don't live in politics.

we live in our souls.

in kingdoms within.

in our imaginations.

escaping to other realms

when the world is harsh.

it has always been this way

time our of Marsh

until the new lawgivers came

their mouths permanently grim

and reduced us all to the same drab pattern.

approved by Them.

resist this.

write in gold. in the sky with blue streamers.

penning the secret lives of trees.

mary angela douglas 26 july 2020;rev. 14 august 2020

1Mary Angela Douglas

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To Sleep Like Dust On The Surface Of All Things

have you been in the corridors of dream when

your luggage falls off the racks but you think it belongs

to someone else so you keep reading the airline magazine

and watch near the wing the cumulus kingdoms pass

or you're on the train and they never come to stamp your ticket

as though you are a ghost and ride the rails for free

even though you're slightly dressed for the office

or someone as you used to be trips down the path in a vague

dream town

and it's you in the blue dress you had forgotten about only this 

time around

it's rose and in between

the clocks have stopped ticking as in an ancient fairy tale

where the spinning wheel dooms us all

one afternoon

to sleep like dust on the surface of all things.

mary angela douglas 13 august 2020

Carpathian Journal

someone else's treble clef dropped out of the sky

and fell slipper soft upon the new sprung grass

where I was idling thinking of lovely intervals

of lovely intervals and a phrase floated down

as if proffered by angels, something...

carpathian journal in violet whispers or was it the

vermilion, the bronzed sunsets

an avalanche of rose

was it a code mislaid by someone in the front office

peace made with a former enemy

a purple horizon arriving

or a yellow one.

I will go back and arrange my Grandmother's irises

and pick my Grandfather's marigolds

and look up something in his stacks of

the National Geographic from that very International Geophysical Year

when I learned to hear the pear toned echo and not the one of ruinous

consequence the Giant's Fee Fi Foe and Fum

spelled out like a law firm from Kingdom Come

when I was dreaming beside the new grass springing

of the carpathians in purple relief on a grade school map

and ate my cake of poppy seed and riddles accordingly

and sang my cherubic cherry folk song over twice

and opened the mail chute in the clouds

on a day of alphabets foreordained

on a day they served pineapple upside down cake

in the cafeteria and small I with my best thick pencil

smote with starry aims

the pale ruled tablet:

to begin

mary angela douglas 11 august 2020;rev. august 14 2020

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My Poetry Book Craft Ideaa

PINKING SHEARS
GLOSSY WRAPPING PAPER
STAPLES COVERED WITH SMALL RIBBON ROSES FROM WEDDING SUPPLY STORES
OR LEMON DROP BUTTONS, SEQUINS
BORDERS ON THE PAGES FROM ART DECO BRINES
OR EACH PAGE WILL BE A TRELLIS WITH HEIRLOOM ROSES CLIMBING OUT OF IT ALTERNATING WITH IRIDESCENT BLUE BIRDS
AND PURPLE WINGED DOVES
AND I WILL BE CAUGHT IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF UNEXPECTED RAINS
WEEPING IN TEARS OF TIERED RAINBOWS
AND IT WILL NOT MATTER THAT YOU ARE GOING AWAY
BECAUSE, LIKE CLOUDS,
YOU NEVER ARRIVED

mary angela douglas 10 august 2020

Faintly We Trace It, Gold In The Mists

 faintly we trace it gold in the mists

and in the time of banishment your Kingdom

wishing we were nearer we plod on

sometimes in acute distress

when you whisper to us my child

this is no wilderness

for I am with Thee

weary of fighting what we cannot see

inscrutable mockeries

weary of so many things and unsure of our footing

we pilgrimage on and every dawn missing you

our true home till a soft breeze rouses us

a voice deep within says you are not alone

and we move on faint in the mists etched in a finer gold

we glimpse it through ever gathering clouds

and cry aloud dear God dear Saviour

help me now through the miry gates to a place

I remember a place in childhood with green moss carpeted

and circles of glimmering stones we imagined was home

where we ate honeysuckle flowers and brushed the rooms

with pine branches broken in the storm 

help me to go there again in the kindest winds flower lifted

far from the wings of ever besetting war

and let the honey of your presence flow

over these ancient wounds.

mary angela douglas `10 august 2020

Dorothy Looks Back Down The Yellow Road

song was my emerald

harkening back to the yellow road

to the sunflower field with the scarecrow

and real butter at home

the day the weather vane broke off the roof

my only memento;then song was my emerald

through all the unwished for setbacks

the sullen January mornings.

how? which way? was left to tell you

east west north or south

the thing I wanted to say

on an ordinary cloudy day

all at once a house can lift from earth

and you are living in the whirlwind

your hands clutching onto the curtains

your stock so low on blackberries, lemons,

clementines far far from the Christmas chocolatiers

the chequered tablecloths for years and the oil lamps;

snowdrifting sleep.

.

and everything that happens after that 

well it may be merry or it may be flat

or we may be scattered on the lawns of God

freshly arrived but till I died

emerald ,emerald was my song.

mary angela douglas 6 august 2020

The Year The Fairs Were Cancelled

the year the Fairs were cancelled

we rode air balloons and imagined the trains unloading

angels for the trapeze

taffy pulls, with the clouds turning into sticky candy.

the green trees swayed anyway

somewhere children played on the swings

and predicted their weight in jellybeans

the weight of feather light years to come'

we still will be the candy striped nation

in love in love with the ferrised skies

and butterflies launched their investigations.

I remembered the Monarchs, their stained glass colour

of orange

and orange pop in glass bottles when I was knee high

to the cicadas

will there be jam

I wonder to myself;wildflower honey and cheese on apple pie

and all the children in new storybooks boosted sky high

when their mother's turn the page and offer blueberries,

the last of the summer.

how will we gauge the maples in their red showering

and will it really be October then

let the pinwheels blow in the autumn winds

and we'll tape sparklers to our old bicycles

just to show we still believe

in thinking wasnt it wonderful flowers could fly

with the cabbage butterflies low sailing by

the ferris will launch again our autumnal aspirations

and we will eat the funnel cakes fried

and the caramel applies

inside dreaming it all over again

flower petaled in the fireworks.

mary angela douglas 5 august 2020

Give Them No Pillow For Their Head Even Of Granite

(on the removal of certain war memorials)

give them no pillow for their heads even of granite

haul them away with their unearned wreaths of laurel

suspend their lousy pay:

let the chorus that surrounds their evacuated  stage surge on

as though they were freshly laid and left to crows

let carrion tribunals be gathered in this bold update

send their angels away

who are they to receive the honour

of having their death masks made 

lay not the sweetheart's myrtle wreath

in any possible proximity

before them though they were only pawns to other men's say so..

or called up as surrogate victims. fodder for the profiteers

ah ah shed no shed no tears

let their names unheralded be not even what snows can whisper over

and glaring light henceforth reveal only the shame

of the remains of blank pedestals and the petals scattered

in futility over their marred shadows.

we want it that way o we do

the harrowing left to us anew

the bereaving left to

court the air who knows where

the harbours in this disappearing act after the fact

the drowning columns.

though in leafy shade

they had long been ignored by passerby 

part of the background of days and artifacts

forever at their backs

the nightmare trumpets in retreat

fanning the night. the awol and the mad children.

stumbling the other way over brier and branch

wild in their tears

the unpensioned in no flight.

their pension death.and their preamble too.

let them never breathe stone breath again

now never laid to rest by our decree

as though Christ had never come.

and Lincoln never said with charity with

malice toward none, let us bind up the wounds of the nation...

in this new shunning.

the childish drummers stilled. 

broken. stone stubble in the fields.

mary angela douglas 4 august 2020