The Angel To Shoshtakovich In A Dream

the angel of music

warned in a dream: -  to you,

half lucid in the light that's left:

you live in a snarling era

be careful

let the notes fly higher

above the wolfish days

that beautiful music, that willow bent down to the ground

encoded with sorrow be not eaten alive

it is the dissonance in God well played, composed

stretched to the breaking point of so many violins

from the nights of His weeping transposed

Transfigured,

sounding the cello's depths, as if it were a Soul

facing Judgement;

the glass like piano,

over the abyss almost shattering;

over the tattered, the reckless earth

the lone aria, broken at the stem;

the part of the map worn through

with grieving.

mary angela douglas 6 january 2022

Golden Vanilla

starting with a fresh large sheet of vanilla paper

my sister and I would say since we couldn't pronounce manilla

and the cream of the paper somehow seemed the same as

the golden banilla ice cream from the Piggly Wiggly our grandfather 

scooped out for us late nights or of a Saturday with of course

Hershey syrup in eye popping swirls....

well on the vanilla paper we seem to draw in red crayon and blue

with yellow for the sun the same house every time with its green 

door 

little steps, leading up to:

the same sun in the corner of the page

with its never varying beams.

but to us it is:

the playhouse of our dreams.

so it bears repeating. just like the ice cream.

mary angela douglas 6 january 2022;29 january 2022

Will It Always Be This Way The Sudden Moon Through The Clouds

this is for the children hand in hand in the forest

the woods are brimming with eyes

there is no firelight

the child in the corner reading his or her life

as if in prophecy, effigy

what can you sing to him or her from the distance

from the angelic distances

to shield them for what comes later

for their life to come...

returning to the picture in the picture book

how the shadows have lengthened

yet you will discern

at the last moment in a stray crease of light

ummistakebly for them

God has somehow opened through dense woods,

a path of Pearl.

mary angela douglas 6 january 2022

Sing the Sixpence Song Without The Pie

out on a limb of stars

no one knows where you are

drink in the fresh night air

you could be anywhere

thinking you're not

not going back this time

not gonna make that climb

back to the working world

back to the ferris whirled round the sun

this poem is for anyone

who just wants some time away

from all that there is to say

to rest in the Milky Way.

mary angela douglas 6 january 2022

Mysterious Beams Sited;Origin Untraceable

it's the bright beam, crossbeams from nowhere that's taking the edge

off the stars

I see it sometimes and like a thunderstorm it clears the air

it gives me hope something else is going on somewhere

outside the office walls and cubicles

far from the schoolroom's yards

some seasons I see it nightly from my yard

as though a new shopping center had opened in the galaxy

and was trying to draw in the crowds

I wonder what they sell there I whisper to the evening.

if they sell a ticket Out

could they drop it from a cloud?

mary angela douglas 6 january 2022;29 january 2022

The Heart That Goes On

we wished for a coherent life

either that or a castle of spun glass:

very little coheres

we imagine it makes a narrative

there are only brief passages

illumined in Heavenly light

simpletons at the Fair

a cow exchanged for  the magic beans

an apple green dress in the Spring

the rest is tedium or war

or anguish or mopping up the floor

after history's lunatics tramp in

yet there are flowers 

there are larks

there is the glissando of harps

an impulse toward Song:

there is 

the Ark of the Covenant

the heart that goes on

after the Flood.

mary angela douglas 4 january 2022

Ars Poetica: Firework Show

setting off fireworks word after word

hoping like anything some are heard

some will turn to kaleidoscopes blazing

some will be duds 

burning out in the summer mud, the grass

when all has passed you will have tried

in one brief span to live and die

to illuminate or illustrate

the earth and skies in your original handwriting

to launch your sorrow into the air

so brightly coloured it wasn't despair,

but love, pure love, in the end.

mary angela douglas 4 january 2022

Who Washed The Dream Sand Out Of Our Eyes

who washed the dream sand out of our eyes

I whisper to myself in moments of stray leisure

who muted the poets so they count  their words so spare

you couldn't think there was poetry anywhere

who stopped up the fountains of the heralding angels

my ruby gold alphabet, who shifted you downriver:

ship without sailing,

undelivered mail.

I remember you with all roses,

the Pleiades;

my vintage valentine

to the dictionaries of snow. 

mary angela douglas 4 january 2022

Notes For A Play I Don't Want To Be In

they tried to ram it down our throats

the notion that Beauty should not be at all

except as a slogan for The Revolution

as if there had never been revolution before

only this one in short term memory stored

so raze it all at one blow: like the little tailor, you know,

who swatted all the flies at the jam pot assuring his Name.

raze it to the ground don't hesitate

crime won't wait.and only crime pays

beauty truth and goodness down all rivers sold

and God is dead again

the doors bolted and locked. the sorrow at the dock

King Arthur out to sea.

what should it mean to me.

coolly he flicked the ashes away

the ashes of civilization, say, you know what I mean

the king for a day laconically, the king of all disposals

sifting 3 minute proposals

mary angela douglas 4 january 2022

The Small Rubicons

crossing the small rubicons 

in my wayside poems

don't let me trip on the words of pearl

unless it is to go back

and gather them dearly again

as if I were still a little girl;

my wildflowers, buttercups under no chin

with tiny sparks of  dew

how happy you made me then,

all my life through

writing you in my rooms

remember me in His kingdom, wont you?

that in a world of strangling soot

I never crushed you underfoot.

mary angela douglas 3 january 2022;29 january 2022

Heaped With Flowers and Hushed In The Urn

heaped with flowers and hushed in the urn,

ashes of  Beauty, what sorrow I learned!

those on the mountaintop covet the valley.

those in the valley with envy have burned.

each of us found our own share of folly

Content's the small diamond we heedlessly spurned.

mary angela douglas 3 january 2022

That Old Riddle Time

whose riddles are these

I ask of Time:

you with your old school doorbell chime

you with your grade school tambourine,

your fairy tale costumes, your gumball machines.

the longer I stay here the more I sing:

it stretches out like a ragbag shadow

and springs back coiled 

surprised it can still behave like a rubber band

the green or the red ones around the Sunday paper

we saved in the kitchen drawer...

and if I think about this enough

I will begin to sup again on vanilla wafers 

till I hear the thud against the welcome rubber mat 

of the rival paper rolled flat as flat

will that take me back to gingham dresses too

just remembering the milk bottles cold, pale blue

on a doorstep set but where was that

or were there posies on a velvet hat

thunder clap! baby cap

a message on a scrap

of the King's best parchment

unscrolled so that the fairy tale Time

decrees the order of the day and all the villagers yelled hooray!

and when someone went away it felt like 300 years

what is it that we cannot comprehend despite our let's pretend

or clouded in tears or running the sap of dreams

and did we take sugar with our cream

so that we want to think we could sink back queasily again

as into a Christmas night pillow

under the snows, blossoming back to bud reversing everything

we are so convinced if we just found the fence

we could be at the beginning of gardens again

in just a twinkle of a persimmon star

a starched out wrinkle

a candy jar

but it's all mystery not a pocket watch to wind

not the railroad kind.

with the golden chain, and delicate engraving;

the refrain in the folk song

that keeps coming back like a wave

to the time of cherries and their stones

the pine branch scraping against our home.

and oh my trees, the feeling we would always be with you

not deserting you like a breeze.

sweetly, unconsciously

with all there was to tell

not forgetting to say: farewell.

mary angela douglas 3 january 2022;29 january 2022

At Recess Near The Shade Trees

we built our playhouse

white stones in a ring

a tree at the center

of everything

brushed with pine branches

the dust from the ground

sectioned off rooms

with green stones and brown

ate the wild honeysuckle

not far from town

recess was magic

classrooms sedate

living in two worlds

a light piece of cake

easily balanced

oh how we were then

halfway in a dream world

half bird and half fin;

learning  to swim to the surface again.

mary angela douglas 3 january 2022

Why Are You Wailing/What Is In My Heart

naming the distinctions between cloud and dream

why must I forget them on coming to consciousness 

the worlds on worlds tumble out dissolving in the morning's glare

I asked the jeweled cartographers: am I anywhere;

can I catch you dream world unaware

are you birdlike should I salt your tail

or ask the wind in seven colours why are you wailing.

what is in my heart.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2022;29 january 2022

Next Time Don't Put The Strawberry Tarts There

the strawberry tarts cooling on the window sill invite disaster

in the picture book where the Queen is humming

Cook has the day off someone is strumming in the courtyard garden

watch out I say but nobody listens to me in the picture book day

turn  the page, next illustration for sure you can do your arithmetic

pure and simple

here: subtracting the stolen tarts from the rest

just do your best my Grandmother says;

angels can do no better.

mary angela douglas 2 january 2022

First Dream Of The New Year

not that far off the ground

our hearts won't fail us

striving to be clouds or cherubs

even when the margins don't align

and birds fly off to other golden glosses

though the flowered borders remain through Time

red and green,

blue and gold flourishes in medieval calligraphy

what is this wizadry

upon the cream coloured morning

though from the high tower warning

cold ships are on the way

still it is still in

the almost festive cell

today as yesterday

the cold ships on the way notwithstanding

as though it were the First Dawn.

and you, the First Scribe of it

silent as snow on a vast page immutable.

mary angela douglas 1 january 2022;29 january 2022

this poem was revised on march 27 2023 and given a new title:

A SINGLE BLACKBIRD (FINAL VERSION)

Spelling The Stone I Awake From Darkness

("the stone that the Builders rejected")

spelling the stone I awake from darkness

spelling the white stone: the lily set in the heavens

the one close at hand in my secret pocket,

the fern curled since last lost summers

in the green shade of the moon I telegraph to God

the author of the milky quartz, my 

leftover Christmas I will remember you

though I am no Magi

I know it is Christ

in the wounded darkness

I know it is Christ

in the rising light

in the rising light I will learn to spell Love

love set in the Heavens, Dauphin coloured light

telegraphic from the Father

love close at hand

poem from the Son

rose radiance I have come to weep you out

as if petals flowed from my eyes

as if my heart were a red rose wave

the  Lord had plucked from danger

on the smooth back of the lightest year

I will spell the beginning of Light

learned at my mother's knee

heart cherished, never to be forgotten

learned at my Grandmother's knee

the way of flowers in the pelting darkness

when you raise your eyes

they are meteors

they are not stones

star showers

I am spelling Home.

past all the Januaries of the Ages.

turning the dark Pages.

in the shepherd's armour.

and in the snow's blue flight.

mary angela douglas 1january  2021;29 january 2022

Elegy For A Cloud Well Painted

to the last puffy cloud on the schoolroom wall

the one outlined in blue with a very large brush

held by a very small hand

I send my skyrocket regards

they won't make much noise

just my shadow through the grass

a brisk March wind

on P.T.A. nights when the stars glittering

made even the chalkboards seem enchanted

the parents and teachers, magical beings.

how will I remember you childhood

at the last moment

will I tilt the pink sand through the tiny hourglass again

or will I fall back asleep into the chocolate earth

knowing that in the morning

it will have to be Christmas Day

mary angela douglas 31 december 2021

A SPECIAL NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE 2022 TO ANYONE READING MY POEMS HERE

 I just want to wish everyone, each one reading this A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2022. I know that looking at the headlines, listening to the news can make you feel like what is going to happen in 2022? And to feel worried or afraid. I feel this way too. But then something inside me says: This is what will happen in 2022: The same God in Heaven who has been with you all the years of your life will still be with you in 2022. He is still Your Friend and He still cares. And you can still ask Him for help, even every single second if you need to and even if you don't. He WILL hear you. He WILL help you, no matter what problem you are facing, big or small but you have to be quiet and calm to hear him and talk to Him as you would a real Friend. BECAUSE HE IS A REALFRIEND.

Nobody can control what happens. It doesn't help to worry. BUT WE DO HAVE THE ABILITY TO READ GOD'S WORD IN THE BIBLE, TO ENCOURAGE OURSELVES AND OTHERS WITH GOD'S WORD AND TO PRAY VERY SPECIFICALLY FOR WHAT WE NEED, TO FOLLOW GOD'S DIRECTION INSIDE OF US (ITS LIKE A GPS ONLY SPIRITUAL) AND MOST OF ALL DEAR FRIENDS, KEEP HOPE ALWAYS IN YOUR HEART. THIS LIFE ON EARTH IS NOT THE END. EVEN IF THE WHOLE EARTH WOULD END, WE WILL NOT. WE ARE ETERNAL BEINGS. WE WERE MADE BY ETERNAL GOD IN HIS INFINITE AND UNCHANGING LOVE TO BE HAPPY IN HIM AND TO HELP EACH OTHER. HE WILL KEEP US. WE WILL LIVE FOREVER IN HIS ETERNITY AND WE DO NOT HAVE TO BE PERECT FOR THIS TO BE TRUE. BELIEVE ON HIS SON JESUS. READ THE GOSPELS TO FIND OUT ABOUT JESUS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. JESUS IS REAL, JESUS IS NOW WITH YOU. HE OVERCAME EVERYTHING HARD IN THIS WORLD, EVEN DEATH. HIS LOVE IS REAL. WE DO NOT HAVE TO BE AFRAID OF ANYTHING. WE CAN LIVE WITH JOY.

WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. NO MATTER HOW MANY MISTAKES WE MAKE GOD IS WITH US JESUS IS WITH US. WE CAN SAY WE ARE SORRY AND START OVER.

WE CAN START OVER AS MANY TIMES AS WE NEED TO. HE LOVES US. THAT IS THE ONLYTHING THAT TRULY MATTERS INTHIS WORLD.

You may find, as I have a lot of inspiration also at this website: bbnradio.org. Which has beautiful music and sermons and encouragement 24/7 and in many languages. I love it very much and listen to it on the radio all the time. You can too. It helps a lot to keep receiving into your heart the only news that matters. GOD IS LOVE. GOD IS WITH US. GOD WILL HELP US IF WE ASK HIM TO AND HE ALWAYS HEARS US.

PLEASE HAVE HOPE. DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED MY DEAR FRIENDS. WE WILL LIVE

IN ETERNAL JOY IN HEAVEN AND HIS JOY IS WITH US EVERY STEP OF THE WAY ON EARTH.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Your friend,

Mary Angela Douglas

Landscapes In Dreams

landscapes in dreams have no ladders

how will I ever get down

perched in the tower at midpoint

onto the solid ground

ground of my being, my God is

I know He will help me mid air

and I will awake all a sudden

free from the dream's light despair.

landscapes in dreams have no shuttles

buses are hard to come by

bus fares a little bit cloudy

unhelpful, the passers by

there in a town that is nameless

I look for old bookshops again

noting how quickly the sun sets

starting all over again

ground of my being my God is

turnstile to let me pass through

I rush down the corners in pages

and write my address in the dew.

mary angela douglas 28 december 2021

Dream Of A Not So Ridiculous Man

(for Mikhail Bulgakov)

pavlovian bells swing out over Moscow

how good to drink apricot juice in a tomb

resuming work on an ill starred manuscript

blind as the shadows

in the darkness at noon

I am tired, wept the princess

of living onstage

of lemon forsythia endless bouquets

I know that it's Jesus, not Pilate, who saves

except that the soul gets a little raw

pretending deep winter is just a Spring thaw.

mary angela douglas 27 december 2021

I'm Not Going To Do It

the flowering of stars lately in the skies

somehow I must disguise, suppress

to be thought wise I guess in my poem

and more or less never mention 

their serial and sequined recurrences in dreams

even though well

in every cell

I hear them singing crystalline belled

across the vast and Christmas distances

to me

mary angela douglas 25 december 2021

Candy Apple Red In The Dead Of Winter

candy apple red in the dead of winter

the Christmas ribbons froze on the evergreen wreaths

on almost forgotten doors in half remembered streets

the snow comes up to the roof only in childhood dreams

dreaming to be reprieved from school

until the Spring.

what can I bring you, new Christmas

richer than memory

even if I bring you the five golden rings

it still couldn't measure up.

I will sip coffee from a foreign cup

still happy that the Star over Bethlehem shone

remembering the scents of oranges and cloves

but deeper now than snow at the poles

the knowledge that earth

is no longer my home.

mary angela douglas 24 december 2021

Sparkle

deep inside the crystal moment

there's a sparkle that remains

something fragile yet so stalwart

nothing nothing can explain

can defile or set at naught

firefly, star shine Heaven bought

now at Christmas, all the year

keep it, keep it , ever near.

like a wish you cannot lose

in your pocket still brand new

like a single crystal shoe

only always, just for you

till a splendor in the skies

defies defies the taunting dark

keep the sparkle in your heart

though men think you not so wise

clueless in your enterprise,

listen not to their sad lies

Love will live and never die.

mary angela douglas 20 december 2021

You Give Short Shrift To The Swan Decked Page

(in sorrow, for the Romantic poets of the past;in hope,

they will return after their banishment by the minimalists)

you give short shrift to the swan decked page,

no quarter at all

to the glittering once upons

and sell your souls for political rage

I cannot love you post modern age

yet can I weep because your sleep is dreamless

and you like it that way.

past music bores you

that shook the stars

and if you go to Mars

you worship the trajectory

the machines that got you there

and not the God who placed in Space

the floating mysteries of so many torches

to light, tenderly, your oblivious way.

what have you got to say for yourselves

for decimating the majesty of poetry

and turning it into one long whine

at the cleverness of all mankind

or at how you were left behind, despondent.

isn't that the greatest crime

of rampant celebrity. darlings,

moonlight seems wasted on you

the song of birds on the bed of pain

how much more could you disdain;

the beaded curtains of the rain

God save you from the paradise you'll make,

have made before

relegating beauty to a foreign post, and shoreless-

breaking  the heart of the Holy Ghost.

Shekinah! the glory of God.

mary angela douglas 15 december 2021;29 january 2022

Plea

Father in Heaven keep from me

the dark sugar voices in ill conceived dreams

the bandits of all sanity

let them be banished from the world indeed

who seek to profit from another's need

who seek the means and twist the knife

and cause unease.

oh banish these.

mary angela douglas 14 december 2021

All Coming True

climbing out of the pit on toy ladders

we waved gaily to the neighbors

to the cream fresh picket fences

and the gladioli.

how glad we are to be out of there we laughed

and the sun laughed with us

the violet shadows on the rose beds.

what a bad dream we had

till the toys woke us up,

the insistent bears.

look everywhere they said.

their paws expressing over enthusiasm

which was of course their norm:

it's always Spring. we're always born.

the sky is ridiculously blue

the pictures in our school readers

all coming true.

mary angela douglas 14 december 2021

And We Are Rooted In A Certain Rosiness Then

when we are young

and we are rooted in a certain rosiness then

that colors all our speaking and thinking

we do not realize what we are living through

with its daily chicken pies and homework

in later years will seem like a mirage

and wonder why we thought it would last.

that all would remain like a stowed train

on later tracks looking back and presently too:

the same rosiness in the sky

the passersby, the same, the storefronts

the same grocery greetings, the oranges stacked just so

at the markets where we say hello to those

we will always say hello to, especially at Christmas;

this is all we know we knew of Time back then

like the Timex watch that just keeps ticking

even when it takes a liking, the tv said

the man in the white coat fishing it out of the 

fishless aquarium;

the way our Grandmother pins her hair before the dresser mirror

and then her hat so her hair, her hat isn't caught

by the Arkansas ever present breeze

and we never think at least not then

of how the wind of death will blow

leaving us behind and all contents to never

settle again in the pink brick house with the piano studio

setting my Grandmother down

and with the Heavenly crown 

she dreamed of here on earth 

before the vast mirrors in Heaven of her rebirth

pinning a new hat, with its small blazing veil

its elegance as if she had now

all the time in the world

which she only had back there in music.

mary angela douglas 10 december 2021;1 february 2022

To The Snow Child Almost Melting From Her Fable

always to be the initial snows coming down, delicate,

pristine of the april snows, most rare and crowning the pale

pale green

confusing the earth by resembling the Springtide's petals

newly budded forth in the apricot winds

oh the synchronicity that never ends

the ephemerality...softly she said, loving the snow words

first starlight, be woven in and out of sleep

and the ballet blanc

and dreams accounted for and all the songs you weep

holding your breath lest you give too much evidence

away

in the clouding of mirrors, when the trees sway

to indicate

that you are even in this realm

mary angela douglas 9 december 2021;1 february 2022

Doll Dress And the Doll's Approbation

a dress of pink rayon with a milk pearl sheen

with tiny stitches tiny seams, gold trim.

for a winter cotillion.

a 19th century air

cloud drifting on an inward stair

chiffon, a trailing sash of blue.

and she'll half raise her hand

as if to upbraid the snow

under a glass dome

then with a rosebud smile

indicate that she's at home

hearing my sister, Christmas good

play Tales from the Vienna Woods

on a toy piano.

mary angela douglas 9 december 2021

Monologue On Cezanne

\I said there is a lemon wind in a painting by Cezanne

also an azure one, they are crosscurrents in the same wind actually,

I feel that this is so and so it must be

but going at different speeds on different tracks

you said (I think), I can't pinpoint your disease

it's time you were heading back...

so I walked a little way farther on

and said to myself

I will sing to myself by myself about the painting of Cezanne

about the azure then the lemon wind

I will find my way to the yellow house behind the trees

with a scarlet roof dappled a blue green mountain daubed

farther off

as if on a Chinese tapestry, the mountain I mean and in a dream with its requisite laurel

and you will never come to hear my heartfelt lectures on art and

the artist

ill at ease who wanted to live in a yellow house with an azure

breeze

and the trees far off when you see them in the painting even when

you are close as you can be so close you think you may fly off into

the lemon wind

and there at least God will listen to you.

I mean, to me.

mary angela douglas 3 december 2021

I Do Not Want To Acknowledge

I do not want to acknowledge

the world as a military outpost

the bruises forming under the sun

the telepathy of clouds in their aftermirage

all sorrow hinging on the word "because"

I want to be still

more still than starlight on the waves

more quiet than words on a page that no one reads

more faithful than anything around

the soul becoming beautiful without a sound

I do not want to acknowledge

the banishment from the fairy tale

of the singing, soaring lark;

the dominance of the dark

the soul as a doormat, caught in all drafts

I want to live like flowers in a foreign field

flourishing God knows only how

I will not bow to iniquity.

mary angela douglas 3 december 2021;2 february 2022

In My Native Tongue

maybe we were written there in all the forgotten languages

by the ardor of God and etched in clay

before the half moon translations set in

with the second or third snows on snow

of the soul's Rosetta Stone.

where did the moonlight all go wept the child;

when God breathed life into the ferns my ferns?

or just after...

encryption isn't everything,nor tree ring disasters

filed away

one leaden symbol following another

in the realm of things overexplained

registering, no feeling;

the codes defined.and all lined up with the stars,

the ancient sediments.

we had wings then, circumventing time;

pink linen napkins at the table;

nursery rhymes.

then later, story times embroidered with the Sun;

the garden gardenia clear in the water glass shining.

I have seen the runes strung like pearls on every rung:

what wish will you grant me in a cryptic aside

I wasn't lavished with enchantingly

in days of gold, at home,

you have run every test there is to run!

and in a dream language all my own.and in

my native tongue.

mary angela douglas 2 february 2022;9 february 2022

Thoughts On Listening To Beethoven Again

lately you dreamed: the soul is becoming a nova or only

that petal of a moon emerging from long standing clouds

over the lone ridge of what planet who can say

or you enter into the dream and it's this way:

where almost everything is familiar

except you were reading the music sideways

and understood nothing.

now we come to music where all is infinite I mean of course the

great composers no longer in vogue

and how they stood supplicant before immensity

and these are the codas of birds that were heaven sent

after long standing trials' pear shaped the tears tearing

the retina

and only Christ as a witness in this place; the music

that falls like a grace on the lone ridge of what planet

who can say

the music stitching star and nova together-

star and nerve,

the play of lightning at the end of the world

and then not, your arms full of lilies

from a distant era and everything that you forgot

it's the white enameled skies arising, the hint of angels,

of a pale green surmising.why,

it's springtime arriving and you in a light coat laughing

at how Time has passed.

mary angela douglas 1 december 2021;16 january 2022

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Act

The Names of Things Spelled Into Her Hands

(for Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan...)

about this maybe it was said about poetry about rising to

consciousness

as being underwater and then at the surface gasping for air

so I will name the color of the rose the rose itself

one and the same so I will come to hold within my heart

the beautiful things the colors that they are their shadows

on the sundial

so I will learn the name of orange the color with it

flower and fruit together leaf and twig and branch

and all of it gold in the light and the light falls into my heart

like a wedding 

and all the gold feelings become then a bouquet of gold fusillades

of gold I remember later on when the light is honeycombed

and then I recall the taste of honey at childhood breakfasts

the wax of the honeycomb and I stood still when my grandmother 

brushed my hair, or fixed my sash or when my grandfather untangled

the necklaces and then I knew this is all the Christmas my soul can

stand

it is too beautiful all the colours and shapes the passing of music

into a room

straight into what I am singing I am singing of what is light years

away

the shadowed pearl of the skies

as I am light years away now from the naming of the rose from water

spelled into my

hands the telegraphic shock of it and the Living stream the knowledge

that fissures out of the 

citrus darkness

that orange is orange that love is love that God is everything I am

made to understand

as you spell into my hands the uprush of angels, the world lit up

from the inside.the apple trees pale pink in astonishing bloom

and fragrant in glacial moonlight.

mary angela douglas 1 december 2021

Irrevocably

 we who remember the suns of other planets must keep still, keep

silence now on earth where we do not live and where the company has

changed hands the company has changed hands and the star flecked

armories

are few

where we renew a language men have forgot as they have forgotten

themselves

so we are trained in outward life to get on board, to be team

players

to direct our glassiest gaze

at the ever shifting Brands some say we exist to accommodate

so that we must relegate ourselves, to participate

all this is dry rot for we are caught by Christ and remember

Forever as even the smallest children do

dressed in blue, examining with surprise

the high pink celestial clouds

let them build their stockades and dangle the keys to the

cities beyond our reach

there is another country...our enforced

lamentable and ecstatic hearts

inhabit

when the peach still shines through leaden clouds accumulating above

the office parks

above the ghosts of trees

and how I wished in the summer breeze I could elude

the smokers on break in the front of the building and

slip out a side door to contemplate Ezekiel's wheel

that I could resign from blind kingdoms

Lord God. I am on my knees all the time now even when I appear to

stand to lean on your Presence to breathe

only you are the green air, the flecked with diamond dust, the ever

flowering wheel

and you believed in us

we will not fail

though we in exile live out our last days

half staged

in this anemic epoch

inside are we reeling the ruby emerald topaz feelings that

we are written into Your Music irrevocably.

mary angela douglas 30 november 2021;9 february 2022

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