THE LAST TO BID GOODBYE

 

not every message comes coated in gold

lifted into Heaven in a rose apotheosis

a stillness in the wind, a cooling shade

sometimes relays to me

a feeling as though in a great cathedral

my soul, composed, serene

had stumbled on the living stream.

apart from music, how to measure time

I was never any good at learning

let there always be music then

so that the soul continues to breathe

despite the innundating noise

that floods the earth.

let the inner stars wax brilliantly

the string quartets be neverending

the memory of Beauty

the last to bid goodbye.

mary angela douglas 30 june 2022

ALICE THE SMALL AND BRAVE BEFORE THE FANTASTIC

"Alice the small and brave..." a faint voice glowed on the wind
oh why pretend she almost fumed..."before the fantastic".
and the voice resumed its nonsense.

then I woke up, said Alice later
not remembering what I saw in the mirrors.
not knowing what to write in chalk

on a slate that suddenly seemed too small
to hold it all.
what will the Red Queen say, the White,

preoccupied me. and wandering out of doors
in gardens not my own in my thin sleeves.
oh am I wiser then and am I really grown?

or who is pasting hearts of red in an antique album
fed and watered by imaginary springs?
never on birthdays would it be the same.

look deep when you dream.
so you'll remember where you were
in between cloud and cloud

when you couldn't hear your mother
her voice made of raspberries...
calling you into Tea.

mary angela douglas 2 may 2015;17 march

WITH EYES DEEPER THAN THAT

(revising the story of the shallow princess (Grimm’s fairytale) who dropped her golden plaything down a well, pouted about it, and was rewarded when she flung a frog into a wall)

[to Elizabeth Orton-Jones, children’s author of the lovely book, “Twig”]


…with eyes deeper than that
there’s a princess at the edge
of cooling waters
in my backyard-
looking for just a hint
of something lost and golden.

is it golden only because it’s lost?
or maybe, just partly-clouded
I mean, like a tiny cloud suspended in a pale blue marble
no one can get at.

will the
sky part, revealing a recollected sun
in purely sequined waters
cause diffuse false hope, momentarily…?
so that she dances in cerise dazzlement
on sea-green glass in the alee
and then, is hurt- suddenly…
and filled with common sense?


then this task is never done in daylight.
what will we do?
there’s the princess, stirring the water
with her see-through,jeweled hands, of course, and chiming to herself

“all is not lost”:
a song both lost and golden in the
flattening world I’ve glimpsed on sepia maps…
the ones indicating no treasure, no treasure
at all
that’s me at the window very small
filled with polished apple measures-
and late porridge on a Saturday;
only half-dusting the what-not in my
Grandmother’s living room-

using too much Lemon Pledge in just one spot
I’m so entranced
by the princess kneeling in taffeta sunlight

right by the crabgrass-
in her pale green ermine;
her budding crown.
is it time past or something close at hand
moving fair and fast
that slipped from slender majesty sometime
as cream poured from an earlier pitcher
might affect this year’s strawberry tartness?

or, like silk spooling with no sound into
an orchid stillness never found
because she did not turn around
in one instant only-
to catch the Goldeness
and was deemed negligent ever after
among other things-
and by only passing strangers
filled with common sense.

marigold petals sifted by far angels are
drifting now adown this amber
I can’t understand-
but then, I’m caught in it, too;
which is the greater miracle
or pavane?

I will put something shimmering on
from a dance-class closet, thin as lawn.
I will learn the steps and not be banished

running to meet her in the sky’s closing jewels.
I’ll bring her cinnamon buns from breakfast
pineapple-upside-down cake from school
-if I may, and in a light pink paper napkin, folded-
and orange tea-
and then I’ll find that

she is me only slightly faded and
later in the day
in peach-bright slippers and a pomegranate gown…
collecting postcards in sunset sudden hues.
oh may I be found a little golden and not lost,
to peer at last into Infinite waters
with a jeweled periscope my very own and a key under the mat

grown up in a veiled hat like my Grandmother’s
with its single velvet rose
and negligent, negligent in the flattening world

I will stare into the deep and cooling waters, too
some of us call, “music”-
with eyes even deeper than that.

mary angela douglas 12 may 2012

ESCORIAL

(for Professor Anthony J. Cervone)

last night I dreamed of the Escorial
of the paintings of saints with angular faces
Toledo in grey and the storms gathering

la vida es sueño or it may have been and the siglo de oro
the siglo de oro the infanta with roses in a square of light
and skies glisten dark plum overnight

and I am singing a vagrant's tune

Garcia Lorca,kaleidoscope moon

moon of the verdant green
moon of the everlastingly verdant green
over the sobbing balconies.

I'm in the book of the small blue flowers;

how shall I play my pavane for you for the hour is late.
the pavane for you and the piano locked.
the bell tower's weathering of storms grows pale

too hard to believe. or to contemplate

a children's lullaby etched in silver.
a paper bird before the war.
a paper bird singing with brilliant plumage

a bird that cannot sing anymore.

the stage sets adored in miniature thrashed.
the sky as pink as the Alhambra at last
all of Andalusia gleams the rust of autumn

and life as a dream of a dream in a dream is past:
tiene que ser de esta moda
a caged music flying into the gold

into the gold of the siglo de oro
Cervantes furtive at the windowpane
laughing at the thought of fame.

the matador's cape is lined in flame,

Segovia. the music of amber.

flamenco barters by the hour.
while I am in a high high tower
with clouds and angels beckoning.

I want to go back to the Escorial.
to the way that I felt then from only the pictures in books.Iberia, to
the oranges composed in a bowl of blue

and that was the whole summer I learned Spanish
the way that I wanted to.
the soul of it the subtle shadings.

as if the kings were looking for you.
all the hidden Magi, for legendary Spain...

were looking for you for costly,
for lost lost time..

in the preterit of dreams.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2020;24 june 2022

ON THE MAGI THAT AMAZED

to have come so far for one Star no matter how resplendent
how convinced they must have been of their own visions
and interpretations
to endure the cold, the deserts, never faltering as though
they had become themselves the Star as though the Star
dwelt in them and an inner music of royal purple infinitely,
relentlessly Vast
truly they were Kings and could not fail to
apprehend the Everlasting
so that God gave them increasing favor even to be warned in a dream
to depart another way from a crazed and covetous Herod.
and from the court astronomers...
all this was later, on the non return.
I loved singing about the three kings,
their gifts proffered in reverence
how the radiance of the child illuminated them on the detour back.
I thought they were my Magi too I loved them so much
I would have fed their camels I would have looked into their faces
and seen the Star in their faces almost blinding them
for the rest of their days
they would have been
that amazed.

mary angela douglas 12 december 2020

TO VALERIE MACON, FORMER POET LAUREATE OF NORTH CAROLINA OR; WORLD POETRY IN A SINGLE BOUND VALUTS OVER THE NITPICKERS

[to Valerie Macon, poet laureate of North Carolina, "above the fray..." sailing over it in sheer love of poetry for its own sake justified by love, not accolades and honorariums.. (July 12, 2014-July 17, 2014) a glorious though brief, reign...]

poetry appeared in the bark of old trees,
in the neighborhood you used to live in
springing up overnight, syringa in the moonlight

cloudy cloudy stars.

in familiar rains, intensifying the lilacs.
in the semi precious lanes of perhaps,

Fuquay-Varina. well, yes, why not?

in the little birds hopping near the mystical puddles
in the parking lots.
and "whishing" in the tails of the grey squirrels

and it was curled around the baby's finger
in the butterscotch sunlight and it never asked why, why
has no committee come to call on me

but burbled over the white stones in the creek,

the varicoloured,
in a wavery sound we knew was music laughing

and the angels, brookside, laughing

fit-to-be-tied:
"what is protocol?

does it have wings, too?"

mary angela douglas 15 july 2014;24 june 2022

Note on the Poem: people (some) were upset that the Governor of North Carolina appointed a new poet laureate of North Carolina,supposedly  skipping the normal protocolof consulting THEM first. All I have to say still, and had to say at the time  is, thank God, since He's the source of it, anyway! (of poetry, not protocol)

NOR BE THE GOLD FLOUNDER

(a very roundabout, off the trolley riff on a disquieting old legend from Quebec, with a generous sprinkling of other legends thrown in as well)


dark mirrors I will not reflect on you
nor find my reverse image burned in on the negative of the Sun, the Son
nor see my thumbnail tiny image in your vu finder overcome
sans the Disneyland
castles, pink clouds, the Springtide pianos and violins I loved
when laden with lilacs and their bright aftermaths.
keep your thunder claps your morose lightnings lurking tongues aplenty, skeletal horseman with no heart and impeccable gloves
your silver nitrate landscapes I am no part of you ,

you will not brand me your brand
nor castle the queen on the scorched the checkerboard earth
on which I stand, dreaming the dream of the flowers, nonetheless.

too long have I been scavenged by you oh aquamarine squint eyed squid,
ghost of a mariner sailing machine
near the wells that give forth no light
even in moonlight you revenant
of deserted courtyards

you the stolid derricks of iniquity, disquiet
you have pumped out your last and rasped in your
raspberry voice at the last repast

I will not rsvp for the balls held in your honor
oh ye eclipses of the sun the moon and the star showers left of
my imperiled quietude: the sole, lean word I keep for you is

depart you finaglers, caramel corn connivers and dissatisfied strivers
who will shrive YOU?
twisters of the grand mal prairie on the way to unfettered no man's land, no man's land

listen mister in your frock coat with the razzle dazzle butttons, button it.

Resolute, I will not weep I will not reap your whirlwinds nor sop in your rations as though I had no recourse from Heaven.
or no mother.

inflate yourselves and purr yourselves to sleep pour your own cream you sizzling griddled cats
you parade balloons sifting the childrens' sugar candies you thieves.

I will not rest in the vacuity of the sorrowful the surcharged deeps of your Junes from which
you think to fish me out.
nor be the gold flounder cut up on your kitchen table to furnish forth your Christmas.

mary angela douglas 30 july 2021;24 june 2022

TIN SOLDIER SUMMARY IN SUMMER

he only knows one way to stand:
the tin soldier way
since that's the way he came
in the box at Christmas
with all the others.
then one day
a fairy fusillade dispatched one leg
or part of it I guess, I read
but still he stayed more

valiant than the rest
propped up in the play
forever at attention.
stalwart in the day
and when the moonlight
through the room shone
on the posture he assumed at home
would always be his
how could it be otherwise
one night with the wind while scouting from the ledge of let's pretend too near the edge

he

plummeted without a sound to

sail in a paper boat far from the lost and found
he floated all alone through drainpipes in the town

with roofs of scarlet, sugar snowed;

under it all he kept his visage fixed
though no one else could know that it was his
till one day from the magic fish in the self same house
the cook drew him out bye bye drain spouts
refurbished for a little space
to see the steadfast rose of her face
the ballerina too
who waited through and through
till her heart of tinsel and gauze
melted beyond all effect and cause
into a heart of lead
that's what the story said.

mary angela douglas 12 june 2020;24 june 2022

THE STRAWBERRY CONE IN THE PICTURE BOOK, TOPPED BY PISTACHIO, TOPPED BY GOLDEN VANILLA

we began early with the ideal
as opposed to real life at school
where sometimes despite the

grownups best efforts
to pin us down in our desks
we would float upwards

children of the space age
with the fairy tale tinge still about us
in our Golden Age.

how to explain these tendencies
without, haha, reverting to psychology.
oh let's not refer to psychology

in this poem or any other.
let's be free
to not return to the subject at hand

observing the members of the band
on the bus after school
with their flutaphones.

I will play upon said flutaphones
remembering the images of ice cream
in various picture books

circa the 1950s
oh, take another look, also at the balloons...
was there ever in real life

ice cream this fluffy, colours this extravagant.
oh welcome child to the inner pageants.
it's eternal ice cream

no matter how it seems otherwise.
no matter how much

you wore out that page
no matter whether the backdrop
is at the zoo near the lion's cage

at the school fair or the county one
where everyone comes for the blue ribbons fluttering
or the cake walks or musical chairs

your eyes are fixed only there even in the comics

with Lulu, on the perfect cone.
there it is again.
in strawberry almost frothing wonder

topped by the pistachio, and then the golden cream
of vanilla or nearby fragrance of the sarsaparilla
I know it tastes better than anything else at the circus,

birthdays notwithstanding
and I bless the illustrator from my heart
and I want to declare in a Whitman like way

in a song of myself
not the elf on the shelf
with Plato stating the ideal forms

this is the form of the ideal
triple decker ice cream cone
imprinted in my soul

let it be emblematic forever
painted always like the Paradiso
in the same creaminess never dripping

never slipping from the cherishing hand

and filled in
in the everlasting colouring books virgorously,
in the neverlands

using our best crayons the best we can

to the heart's delight
in the heaven of heavens.

mary angela douglas 29 december 2019

ENTER PIERROT LAUGHING

dusk falls in sepia tones
as it always does in the vintage photographs
but pierrot is a complex subject even so
is he laughing or crying
will you ever know the pinwheel effusions of his summer epochs,
his heart that sows white rosebuds
seen from the distance you are sure his smile is real
on closer inspection what does he really feel
no daguerreotype will ever reveal

is it the sun after rain or the other way round a hopscotch falling to the ground a lamentation of coloured chalks or in pastels

is he feeling very well

he's out for a walk in infinity

with the beau geste

 and his silken shoes on the moon's crest

or a quaking wire...

what was it you aspired to;.

a long time ago I played La Polichinelle on the piano

no one would believe it now. how I paint in imagination's gallery
his mauve bright tears, the small smile of redacted years his penny shine forays

perceptive angels, do what you must

guard his tremors, cherish his dust

I cannot find him.

mary angela douglas 1 april 2021;rev. 2 april 2021;23 june 2022

THE REVERIE ON A VINTAGE LACE DRESS

whenever you view the veiled snows,
vectors of moonlight falling across
old floors maybe you think to yourself

I shouldn't update the vintage lace dress
but wear it as it is.
this said the princess to her closet,

to the mirrors rimmed.with frost.
whenever I view the dimming snows
I think of old stories lost

of the shirring of
evening's swallows,I think of them-
of the cost of sunset silks.

and how alone they were,
the poets, badly underwritten.
slim candles

burning down in the
cold platter midnights,

olive loaf sandwich.

the last deviled egg.

the former picnic fare
7 up in a paper cup
7 maraschino cherries in the dregs.

and when I think these things,
of how awful it was for the
mermaid growing legs

and then, a Soul-
a pall comes over the kingdom.
the foolscap crumbles to dust...

I dream of rust continually
and of the dearth of wings.

mary angela douglas 3 august 2015 rev. 7 june 2017

CONFESSIONS AMONG THE JEWELED

these are the vials for sunsets, evening stars
the curious peddlar cried; the antique dealer
with his camera obscura obscured.

and have you quarried rubies from roses,
emeralds from the trees in the jewelry box
of His worlds?

or is it the other way round
you must, you must turn
in the common round

with your new kaleidoscope
fresh from its Christmas wrappings.

we whirled on, my heart and I
and reveries returned I'd not been
scolded for, in the past

because they didn't know,
did they, sans and sans the Looking Glass
the entire time my eyes were fixed

in the rows on rows (on "today's lesson!, class")

I was thinking only of this.

mary angela douglas 5 september 2015

THE PRINCESS IN THE FABLE

she had a heart like confetti glass


a something silver unsurpassed

the brightness of a cherry branch

a kind of resolute dreaminess

I see her castle soft as pearl

deconstructed in a stupid world

the signet ring she always wore

when calling never ship to shore

consigned to live among the dead

to a vast silence truly wed

a valentine beyond duress

and not a rose pressed in a book.

mary angela douglas 21 february 2022

SO JEWELED IN THE STIRRUPS FLASH THE OUTRIDERS

[to the immortal voice of Ethel Barrymore-
to all the outriders of our language]

jewel-like in the stirrups flash the outriders

saving what can be saved of a forgotten line.
fitful sleep the children near the hills
that they forgot to climb.

when will you return, if ever,

my dissolving language, trebled with tears?
forever shining on the brink-
we lost! for years.

I hear it like a whispered snow
of maytime petals recherché

but who will clink the fairy tale chime
against the painted backdrop of her

stereoscopic moons in storage?

portray: the silhouette of Juliet as once she was remembered on the stage
when brief, the nightingale was in tune
recedes into a ciphered gloom as
the audience streams from garish marquees

pleased with themselves and the postmodern age
taking aim at the sound of waters
the sound of waters
outcroppings of the stars

beauty in exile when she is far

far from the land

but, as in some Greek myth, not the promontories
where the sea walls broke through

and it's the odd story in an antique book

no one ever looks at now

that only the sound of her voice

brought theatre goers to tears

regardless of the script
an actress floated in on
white rose perfume, in rose fraught dresses

in the jeweled stirrups outriding,,,

will her ghost linger?

or will we speak like machines.

the sound of her voice a fading music
where the heart was wedded to the
sacred names-

the Soul remains:
impervious in her dreaming yet - outlawed-
while the commonplace takes hold the blase

the technocratic flippant voices burned out

by the Method then by
turncoat generations of
the whatever.

trained to abhor the semintimental

the grandiose

disposed of by the Huntsman; 

in favor of the unfair "Fairest..."

I hear a murmuring lapping at the cliffs

of ignominy, not dispossessed! angelic,
wearing away at the stone:

ah, the Mysteries; the voice unwearied, starry-

recitative as scented rains:
remains. Remains.

the traces remain.
synchronized to an inner flame.

mary angela douglas 24 february 2014;rev. 3 march 2014;rev. 3 november 2014;23 june 2022

TO POETRY, FOREVER

TO POETRY. FOREVER.


if I could have written on an endless sky
the beginning and ending of your fraught and mysterious syllables
and only in clouds that I knew would fade
Poetry, still I would have tried.
or gone up in flame like the least, scarlet leaf to find one gold

remaining song from you
in pieces, weeping on the ground-
one singing fragment from the ancient past of you still singed.
I traded in beauty the poet Sara Teasdale said
who left your words to prove long after her evening star
had vanished that she lived and suffered here;
so had she anchored so many goodbyes.
even in a banished Kingdom, in a mere and clouded handful of sighs
we still will whisper your name:even in the Kingdom of lies,
still shine with your truth:down to the last and ragged shore of our

breath
form of music;
form of the quenchless tremulous soul eluding death
lyre unquenchable through all ages:
burnished, anguished, raging ineffable heart
streaming with all the Maypole ribbons of your art
world without end do not leave us orphaned
at the core of all speech
forever beautiful and just beyond our reach.


touchstone, high watermark of God Himself may you prevail.
mary angela douglas 16 april 2021

THE MARVELOUS FLOATING BOOKSHOP AND VIRTUAL ICE CREAM EMPORIUM

THE MARVELOUS FLOATING BOOKSHOP AND VIRTUAL ICE CREAM EMPORIUM


[to my sister Sharon re our childhood dream of founding a bookstore/ice cream parlour/toyshop, couldn't fit the toys in, sorry
but you know I tried]

the poem with the caramel icing
turned out right
though no one knew about it

and nobody ever saw
the Marvelous Floating Bookshop and Virtual
Ice Cream Emporium on Earth
(except perhaps, me)

though I promise, it was there
painted cherry vanilla
on the little lilac lane that

only came into view
on the left hand side of the bus
when I was the only one looking out
in that direction.

and you dropped the day in your merriment
melting like a creamsicle on the blossoming sidewalks

where who could ever tell them from the flowers,
night children blowing in a garden- thick in the shade
of lime trees

and lavender blue at midnight
every blade of grass bent toward us
as we wandered into a strawberry frothy feeling 

the Marvelous Floating Bookshop and
Virtual Ice Cream Emporium:

four paperbacks, 25 cents each
wrapped in brown paper tied with a string
and no string theory and free, free, free
lusciously malted through and through and

I'll have a cherry phosphate stylish Rose said
in a book I read
crackling new

with a papery perfume
like a box of penny valentines just opened
and every heart

for you at the singular page
only you will decipher dear readers
still and still and still

you wander or you will among vintage illustrations
toward the drugstore racks in dreams that squeak
when you turnstile turn them:

content is a fizzing fountain coke
and the odes of poets never before heard from on earth

mary angela douglas 8 july 2013;22 june 2022

AMERICAN CLEARING

(for Harold Bloom)

I see the poets writing their last songs
and the trains up ahead in an American clearing
and the cottonwoods murmur the poplars planted

long ago, how, how long till they depart
who wrote the wounding of the hearts and the balms too.
feverish in their dreams now and the last winter set

not much time for their regret except
when will the listening world awake
I hear them ask for mercy's sake

you weren't born anyway for commerce.
commence again the latticed page
latticed with remaining light though

the golden age is out of sight
coming or going in the nights
that others knew, before you.

oh watchmen on the fiery towers
pitched long past grief's relentless hours
whisper a word or two for us

who follow you as it's said, to dust,
though not our souls
into the country none on earth has seen.

that we may bloom on other shores
remade in the green of our befores

and take up singing evermore
and learn what all of this was for,
the music and the chiding.

mary angela douglas 15 july 2018

I THINK OF MONUMENTAL BEAUTY OFTEN

I think of monumental beauty often
of the rise and fall of cloud civilizations
the pink orange folds of the

drifting sheep and who will corral them in my sleep,
my thoughts, in the red clover meadows grazing
near clouded over Andromedas

while the school films drone on

I think of the histories of small pools reflective of
the cloud empires and how I want to live in
their green blue world

as though it could be a second and an emerald birth
with art deco sapphire accents
into coolness rippling out from the center

of small mirrors

where would I be today if I had studied assiduously
dates, treaties, the names of kings
I don't know

I remember swinging almost to the edge of clouds or at least, my sister did;to
their vast embroidered cities of loveliness tinted
like the earliest paintings of the Renaissance

then almost disappearing as if into the skies
as one vast pearl.


mary angela douglas 13 february 2018;22 june 2022

CAROUSEL CANDY APPLED

(To my Grandmother Lucy, my Mama "The Princess
and to my sister Sharon on her birthday...)


you can't live on the carousel forever
I could imagine her saying
when I was candy appled
with the stars nearby
when our yard at home
seemed to me more favorable
than any country yet born.
who knew then how ribbons would fend
or the small cologne we bought
at the drug store to be rose imbued.
at the cotillions.
or a small notebook, and a green pen
to write in green oh evergreen words again: oh
what is this round trip in time
with no ticket station
I would ask my nation
of dolls and there would be a pause
and they would say so many surprising things.
gather our gemstone rings of glass
from the gum machines at last we know what Song is for
and we won't be dissuaded from picking up
blue jay feathers from the ground
and the Arkansas milky quartz I found, I felt was like a pearl edged sky
when I was a little girl wearing velvet

and the color why
and like the littlest angel from a tale at Christmas told
we'll keep it in our pockets so we won't grow old
these souvenirs from earth
so when the sheep are folded in the emerald fields
and the last tinted sunset peals
we won't feel at all alone.

mary angela douglas 19 august 2019;22 june 2022

THEY HAVE WHIRRED INTO THE SILENT WORLDS

they have whirred into the silent worlds
where no foot falls
those who walked beside you

on the early golden road
small hand in large hand confided.
and now, what abides, you cry

in the dust and looking long down that road

of rust
or back behind you
to where their kindness and their care

was like a wall between you
and the outer darknesses.
how little knowing then

they would ever depart
you played in the side yard
watched from a kitchen window carefully.

now you would give each day you own
in exchange for knowing them as you did then
in the present tense.

but they have folded all tents
and left you here,
the last nomad,

you tell yourself (melodramatically

almost tempting their celestial affectionate laughter)

on days without gingerbread,

without the summer's shade.

mary angela douglas 2 july 2016;22 june 2022

IT'S PENNY CANDY MAYBE THEY THINK

[where troubles melt like lemon drops
away above the chimney tops
that's where you'll find me!

-Somewhere Over The Rainbow (lyrics, Yip Harburg;
melody, Harold Arlen)]

(again, for Judy Garland)

it's penny candy maybe they think
whenever you start to sing;
anyone on any day could do that;

penny candies, easy to arrange
them in the see-through jars on the counter
so that they look resplendent.

but God in his rainbow diction knows
exactly what it costs, the orange, the rose
the ultraviolet blue

and so would you
if you tried to do it.

or were ever around
when the lemon sounds come down
and it rains lemon drops all day

in such out-of-the-way places!

mary angela douglas 1 february 2016

WHAT MUSIC THERE IS

for Martin Burke and for Marie-Anne


...the light on my hand is the shadow on the page and the silence a perfection..."
Martin Burke, Vortex

what music there is for the hand, fallen from the page
for the eye lidded upon

its own worlds now
only angels know
in their celestial vows.

what music there is
what music can there be
when the sea runs down to the sea

its own disappearance allowing or
for the harp too suddenly unstrung.
and familiar streets are overcome

familiar bells unrung
by the bookshop, cafe absences.
the sun in your eyes more fugitive now

than I imagined it who never met you
except through poetry
who dare not imagine your sweetheart's grief.

or how she binds laurel, leaf to leaf.

there is a glow by fruit stalls
old cathedrals.
the angels hidden in the shrubbery

that shook when you strode by
thinking you were the wind.
now that you no longer

breathe upon glass
or recognize old friends
how could they pretend

Brugge is not bruised now
that you've become her past
who seemed so vital and proud

tilling your garden of words
so happy to be, it seemed
the genial brother of so many,

poetry's herald.and all the rest,
second guessed, now.

what music there is for this
I can't bear now.
no elegies, you said

for those you had lost.
and now we bear that cost as well
who cannot call you back

to Beauty's spell on earth,
to your mythologies who miss you,
your twilight harbours;

you Irish Belgian Orpheus
maddeningly gone
from our midst.

what music is there for this.

mary angela douglas 12 december 2017

CATALPA TREE IN THE DISTRICT

once I loved a catalpa tree

because its leaves stirred heart shaped

in the wind

and it was outside the window my only window

when

living in a yellow house in just one room, an

amiable renter, and

sometimes on a screened in porch

where the sun turned my rose spined books a

faint pink

and my newsprint map taped up of where the

heart spent refugees went

that was when I loved even more than the whiff

of lilac on the wind,

the story of emigres who learned to live in

books;

the legends of swans.

I saved my coins and went to the ballet

and dreamed then, a different choreography for

my life

and like St. Francis I believed that

it was right

all things should shine my sister, my brother.

sometimes I still believe that.

it has been a long time now

since the workmen came and sawed the tree

down to the ground

where its orphaned birds fluttered around the

stump;mystified

why should it die

because it soared and spread its heart

helplessly over the wires;

there was no warning

but what would they say?

we have come to kill the catalpa tree today>

the City sent us.

mary angela douglas 8 october 2021

WHEN I AM LOST LIKE THE STRAY PUZZLE PIECE FROM THE BOX

when I am lost like the stray puzzle piece from the jigsaw
so that I want to climb back into some sky blue preexistence of the Soul
as if that would be possible and hide among the roses there
or in some unclocked in eternal glaze of the evergreen shade
take refuge near the silver of the winter sun
in the drifts between school days and beyond the accountable
and all homework, dream
till I see the gleam of your stars Lord when you set them there
before all tarnishing
let me stay only a little longer in the twilight of all Mays
cast in my blue shadows or in the rose period remembering
fresh chalk and the pastels from the tin unused
knowing the pink blur between the green hills
had to be the rising, not the setting sun.

mary angela douglas 28, 29 august 2021

THE SUNSET OF WORDS

from the sunrise of words they have stolen a little light
here and there so that words have taken flight,
the gleaming words

the ones you cherished in a lullaby sleep
ah they have stolen or excised out

and coin by coin
my treasure! jeweled language without measure

and was there none to cry out
no one to hear
no one to stand in guard

of all the angels o
they have stolen the lily and the myrtle
from out of the verse

of the past
the moon's reflection on the waters
the child's in a looking glass

the sighs of the least and last

and I am held in the tower
cried the Muse
the Muse of our lost hours

and the muted swans.

all that was once upon.

is there none to save?
men rave in gibberish
day by day and close

the book and say
we have made the sunset of words
all by ourselves

and oh, we are proud

and will it out loud to be this way
that Beauty in tatters should go about the woods,
senseless and dumb

in the mermaid hour
when the dagger must be flung out far
from her on the christening wave

and ah! beyond reach

flung far.
yet Love shall rule in the End
even without speech.

the Light, my soul, never wavering.

mary angela douglas 2 september 2017;22 june 2022

WHO WAS JOHN WHITESIDE'S DAUGHTER

even the bells don't sing her name:
painted in whitewash on cotton clouds

that float away;
the geese she tended scatter distressed by a

crystal shadow, at best;
a girl in watercolour skirts, the grounds.
who is John Whiteside's daughter

can she be found

what is an elegy without a name
or was grief for her as weightless
as the questions at the end of the chapter:

[can you explain? what was The Poet
trying to say,the Poet who signed
his name to the Poem; for sure

the Poet whose name endures]
what is a watercolour in the rain,
what is a watercoloured name

dissolving here in any close reading
when parents christen even children
dead on arrival

and etch it in stone, the christening name-
if not in "marble or the gilded monuments".
she could have been anyone; a tiny doll soldier

in the tomb of an unknown Pharoah.
well you know, how did her mother feel about that?
does anyone know? that's my question.

did she softly cry not wanting to make a scene
what kind of immemorial poem is this
for my little girl...

the angels took it away with them
(I mean, her name)
leaving behind the funeral train, the flowers;

departing with
her light, her apple white hours
where God,at least, Who knew what to call her,

[alone, alone...the bells intone:

fleeting, the goose girl when God
as they say in the South,
called her home

mary angela douglas 10 december 2015;22 june 2022

IMPRIMATURA

wrecked gold of the far illuminations
is coming home
and moonlight sunk in

its own mirrors helplessly
I find forever
in the glazed word you speak.

but april blossoms on the wall
when you bind your luckless
clouds together

and you wound nothing.

imprint this with a spendthrift's sigh
with the knowledge that every colour breathes
the rose you gathered as if it were

long-ago
from very Light.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2011

TO BE SUNG IN WHITE TULLE, SILVER-SEQUINED

the king mislaid his
blueprints for the stars
and cries at night

into his golden shadow

lost courtiers kneel
before the showcase cakes

little children may not eat

no matter how long they say
they are sorry

that the toeshoe, thistledown moon

is slipping farther every day
down the rimed rose campion

windows of the castle.

but they will keep their
diamond latchkeys safe

at this rhapsodic distance from the sun-

from the sparklers' fizzy dreaming at the end-
from that last summer-

and bless - and bless-

eternal lily snows on the fleeting ground

mary angela douglas 25 may 2011

VAN GOGH TO HIS BROTHER, UNDATED LETTER, 1891

(for my brother, Alan Leslie Douglas)

the yellow leaves were falling
I could not catch them with my hands
the yellow stars and the pastel haloes
round them, ringing like colored glass
and every shade, a sound:
I was painting them mid-flight-
rosettes, like medals pinned against
the night, my
Legion of Honor-

you know, we always knew the
time of orchards was so brief, remember?
the pink and the mauve - the
apricot light - the moment's lightening.

I have a new studio; the walls are iris,

touched with snow.
I'm painting in colors we never
dreamed existed - without haste.
Dear Theo.
nothing is wasted.

mary angela douglas 23 april 200


Note on the poem: I do know that Van Gogh died in 1890. I wrote this poem imagining what might have happened if he had lived for another year as it often happens in life that unexpected good happens after tremendous difficulty.

Or the poem can be understood as a message to Theo from Van Gogh in the afterlife where he understands his art completely and is allowed to continue in it.

AROUND THE FAIRYTALE'S GEMSTONED PAGE

[to my Grandmother, Lucy W. Young, my Grandfather Milton B. and to Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, among others...thank you! and thanks are due to God since as a friend once said, "God gives us the fairytales to show us the way home... "(P.S. To my mother too, of course who spoke in syllables of strawberry and utter diamond all the time. really.)

around the fairytale's gem-stoned page are sun splattered leaves and berries softening the borders ferny angels lightly penciled in beyond the trees that shift like pedaled dreams

on the dream piano of the pale blue country lined with gold I pray to someday rescue if I can- pure swansdown drifts down these elaborate Capitals on every sunset's page the

swans revert to children and are saved on the one rock left in the watercoloured whirlpools of their sea- and I skip backwards to a small green house with spearmint strip-ed

awnings or a pink- beige brick with picture windows and mimosa trees... you can't fade away along the borders flushed with glaced roses I won't let you- and every time

i close my eyes the skies are pleated with your swans the ruby candlestick in Beauty's room drips very lime-green wax all over my small table with the circus scenes. maybe

for childhood's jam-spooned days, alone, they gathered all those startling coronations, words of best green velvet, I don't know how else the carriage came to be cut from the

creamy rind of citrus afternoons as if with the golden scissors of a King Hans Christian Andersen it's still me wavering in a pink embroidered dress and golden slippers,

wobbling near the icy angels with their candlespun whispering as they say: rework the hidden brocades now of all lost feelings, places, courtiers, things- in snowy silence

heaped with silver lilies...shine... I can't break faith with the fairytale task till vaster kingdoms come and my sister's perfect Chopin bubble clears the pink-white-red azaleaed

fence while the clouds keep billowing out beneath their clothespins the milk makes butter islands in the oatmeal until- the last sweet early peas are sorted satisfactorily

from the Milky Way and kept in the stoppered bottle on our etagere, the one the colour of ashes of roses... but will they turn to diamonds in the end or chicken pie you may well

wonder when the curtains close... Grandmother's playing Liebestraum again in her rose taffeta on a rose taffeta staff she turned to diamond music in the end taking my

Grandfather's arm and heading upward without her pearl opera glasses but with the Psalms all double scored in moonlight... the day winds down like antique toys in soft

yellow chenille- the jeweled heart sifts in the furnace the tin soldier cannot reach the tabletop... someday I will learn to live expecting better swans and in your name I'll find the

lemon latitudes so fine of the summers everywhere now- of the hidden mermaids with a sainted love dissolving into foam...

mary angela douglas 5 april 2011

SHADOWS OF SWAS. SNOW TEARS ,MAGESTERIAL

shadows of swans, snow tears magisterial
in this white valentine enfolded are
framed at the window from
which I cannot turn

there are silver apples in the air

will I ever understand
your pure spectacles so soundless
re-enactments of lost stars as they are losing

light

oh what in your mind makes it begin again...

how your heart breaks off
little pieces from a distant
sky to say something, anything

filtered through lace and lace and
mystifying - so that I cannot hear-
but only feel it-

shred your crystal flowers from on High
for softest reasons known only to You-
and hush the shadows of swans in me
that want to sing only the ends of the stories, oh-

there are silver apples on the air
this winter in Shalott may the wind through the syllables of trees just for this space,

stand still-

mary angela douglas 7 december, 4 december 2010

THE KITCHEN MAID REMEMBERS THE EMPEROR'S NIGHTINGALE

(to my Grandfather)

once more I stand
before the palace wall
my chores half-finished

to hear the nightingale singing
as if it were
the last time at the dim window
and all the little griefs compounded

and the storm clouds
above the Emperor's chamber
turn into fields of
white violets before my eyes.

and there is somehow a liquid
ladder of jewels near the veranda
I could climb to anywhere and
no one could call me back;
then I look down at my
suddenly embroidered apron in surprise.

the Emperor hangs onto life,
his every tear worth half-a-kingdom,
and the hidden trill is everywhere now:
it settles slightly in my heart
as if it mattered that a
twig could break.

color washes back into the scene
well-played - down and down the cherry sought
orchards on towards the riverbank of lost delights
beyond-

the fine-edged iridescence
of a small departure only I noticed.

I never heard music like that again
though I lived on:
sifting the snapdragon shadows
on gold-dimmed afternoons;

calling to God when the willow-ware dusk
poured into porcelain skies-
bidding the firefly angels all, goodbye-

mary angela douglas 22 october 2010

WAVING FROM THE DOCK THIS TIME

[to Emily Dickinson]


waving from the dock this time

where no ships ever come
I fold my handkerchief into

a sudden snowflake

or a single tear mislaid-
forbidding winter's music...

sew poems like stars.

then let the darkness come.
can you hear

the ghost ships surging

in an apple wind?
I can

see clouds like lapidary ships descending

through a
fifth-floor window descant and the winds-

mary angela douglas 2 august 2010

FRA ANGELICO IT'S THE ROSE AND THE GOLD

["some works are for the earth, some for heaven."
-Fra Angelico]

Fra Angelico, it's the rose and gold

I want to say
rude shadows chide me,


"don't say" - but I

find words the colors of
your angels' sleeves

and hold in my hand the

quartz of your music that won't fall apart.

whenever I lose the way and chandelier 

branches

in the rain remain unlit

when Light is

mislaid in some other poem.

procure the fairytale brocades you

must have left in a Florentine summer

and never got around to using

for

my impoverished reverence

made rich again-

mary angela douglas 2 august 2010;21 june 2022

HERE'S THE VIVID CRAYON OF THE SUN

here's the vivid crayon of the sun
the one that's not broken
the very one you could peel

instead of oranges
if the fairytale required it-
to survive

and the gold foil
chocolate coins in
nets of confetti-stars

fall out of the cupboards
of old houses
whenever you yank the

little glass knobs too hard-
it's
just in time for supper
in your new thrift-store

dress with a second-best
stiff-starch magenta petticoat;
it's fine as Christmas wrapping,
pleated like a star
only God could summon

even as another interview falls through
or simply melts away...

there's still the lemon-waxy streetlight where
the last bus waits for you only

slightly transformed

mary angela douglas 21 august 2010

THE PRINCESS CRIED REAL SEQUINS

the princess cried real sequins
in the play:
I saw her

from a mauve-lit distance
fall away into sudden
dearness there

where the violet curtain,
tied-back, slightly
swayed

and a small hand
made of moments
cast an ivory

obliviousness, not a
spell

somewhere else
where it was snowing
and children laughed whole coins
of silver-

bent on her deliverance-

mary angela douglas 21 august 2010

CHERRY COATED ANGELS

outside the schools of everywhere
I cried:
God opened the book of stars

and I looked up
he opened the book of roses
and I wept, the book of snows

and each, in turn, to me, disclosed
where quarter notes drifted at the
edge of the seas and washed away in

music I breathed in
fond colors stay
like rainbows, melting in a humming spinning top

on the living room carpet
just before dinner.
it's the earthenware emblems I know now

and the near-blaze still on spring-fed alphabets
greening the glade where hidden
tigers came to drink

the topaz ripples off the everyday
and my Grandfather sharpened pencils fresh
for the appled school day as if he were
carving marble

oh you who must
in every age deny
the clouded and dreaming child as one deluded

who must be changed or die
with his or her petaled forehead pressed
against cool windowpanes of frost-tinged

faery-novas or cherry coated angels-

I won't tell you why
God opened the buttercup
clavier of the sun

and let me play-

mary angela douglas 22-24 august 2010


*my image is meant to be angels wearing cherry coloured jackets, not cherry coated as in candy. It was hard if not impossible to make this clear in English without a footnote. I would like to find a language where it would be easy to say this, it must have other wonderful things in it, as well.

PIANO EXERCISES

sight-reading the rose
I look for the garden
but it isn't there

sight-reading the star

I think I am shining
but it isn't here

sight-reading the wind

I turn to go
I turn to go

but I don't know where

mary angela douglas 28 july 2010

RAIN AFFECTS INCIDENT LIGHT

in light that streams paradisical
through trees rustling in old movies, films-
there must be so many

soughing angels

or why does the light caught forever
in these branches-

especially in black and white-

reel in my heart
with holy shadows cast
in strange familiar distances

I seem to know, to have known

a priori

cinema. cinematique
quarto shadowed suddenly
to me it seems your

dreams are woven in dreams are

woven but the silvered loop
slips from your hands and
childhood hoops spin backwards into night.

say you're sorry to the brothers Lumiere
if not to God my pearly fountainhead

it's Yours.

but the guardians of these images sleep.
the moon drops from its murky frame.

expatriate angels
sought no more
sit in the pouring rain and cry-

for what seemed present

that is now reclaimed

when FINIS flashes on the screen

mary angela douglas 17 june 2010;21 june 2022


[*incident light is a film term refering to light that shines directly on objects rather than

reflected light. I am trying to say - in the arts - if you lose the light that comes from God you lose everything, because only with that is an extra dimension woven into what you do that you could never produce on your own]

*brother Lumiere, very poetic film pioneers in France experimenting in color in the early 1900s.

LAMENT OF LEONARDO ON A LOST NOTEBOOK

my fair copy of the rings around the moon
got into the wrong hands-
stashed in the pirate's hoard

next door to rubies and a retrograde coinage

and the key to that lock was thrown
by a vagrant hand for no reason at all

into silver-pointed dawn.
now in a lime-leafed summer, once again,

brocaded planets spin so unredeemed
but not for that much longer-

mary angela douglas 20 december 2009/28 june 2010

TESSERAE

turning aside from mysterious tesserae
you wept into a living sky

surviving without
the murky watchers over
the heart's too-shadowed tides

tesserae.
in the arch of Heaven, well-hidden
made brighter, more angelical
who can say how-

illumine all
these short-circuited ways
in a tattered script, revealed in dreams,
it may be...

down a dream green
corridor of trees you walked on
almost immune
in the frosted over

Capital
somehow shine shine your
inverse rays through these
small

sunburst syllables, tessarae,
invective is not poetry is not
anything at all and we are suffering

under so many low ceilings.
my magnificat falls apart-
who can say why
from all the sidelong arrows
through the heart, the professional
sizing up...
but I've pulled up my sagging socks

thinking of Vissi d' Arte-
as sung by Callas.
even in spring, tesserae,
the trees on earth
wept flowers of gold

resembling nothing, if
not you
and I am withholding my

last golden turnip from
the still watery Stone Soup
required by those unkind;

in subzero basements my
stoic angels stand
this
non-antiphonal silence:

holding fast the tilted mirrors mirroring
my God my God

mary angela douglas 7 january 2010


*this poem was inspired by the following passage on mosaics from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1983:

"The tilting of tesserae became an art in itself. In 6th-century Byzantine mosaics, there evolved a new technique whereby gold and silver tesserae were set at extremely sharp angles to enhance reflection. By pointing their mirror ends downward in the direction of the onlooker it was possible tro secure maximum light effect. In Hagia Sophia at Istanbul, the enormous gold areas in the wall mosaics of the emperor Justinian are set with cubes tilted this way. In one particuarly dark corner, the tesserae are not only tilted downward but are also turned slightly sideways to catch the light from a nearby window. A similar technique, based on a high degree of tilting of the gold tesserae in unlit areas, can be observed in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (c. AD 690).

Halos set with tilted cubes that bring out the circle of light surrounding the heads of holy figures became common in Byzantine mosaics of the 6th to 7th centuries, as is seen in the mosaic panels dating from this period in the church of Hagios Demetrios, Thessaloniki. Striking examples of such haloes are also found among mosaics that were put up in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in the 9th centry, above all in a panel with the kneeling emperor (Leo VI?)

Effects such as those described above are unthinkable without the accumulated experience of the craftsman-artist. In the 20th century, mosaic increasingly has become an art divided between the inventor who furnishes the design and the worker who executes it. It may be that the dry character of many modern mosaics can be ascribed to the fact that the artist no longer puts his thumb on every tessera."

UNWRAPPING THE PAPER THEATRE OF THE MIND

unwrapping the paper theatre of the mind
see the gold of stardust sifting past
the foiled huntsmen in the distance...

the backyard roses heaped up on the stage
let you know the end of something shines-
but you are too entranced to move
when no wind stirs the whirring pinwheels

and the dolls can't tear their marbly eyes away
from the cardboard angel flittering

in a tiny pink spotlight.
let the colored filters turn their
candied cellophane light,

rickety, on a
single crystal slipper-
though the paper candelabrum blaze

in medias res...
the razzle-dazzled mouse runs down
the semblance of a chime-

it's time to go.
and you can feel
faery music from the battlements

begin, this time, for real-

mary angela douglas 3 february 2011

THE MERCHANT RETURNS TO BEAUTY

here is the rose that cost me everything
he said
if only you had asked for peacock

diamonds, castles of aftermirage-sweet

dresses of orchid embroidery from the floss of
hummingbird wings, Viennese

tortes for breakfast lunch and dinner-

a brace of Firebirds
the end of human suffering;

one more golden breath...

here is the rose red as blood

that should not mean
what it means now

how could you know

what I know
and still live

tomorrow is a rose-red ship

breaking apart mid-
harbor

on a calm day.

while spectators gather

mary angela douglas 30 november 2009

P.S. Of course, as we know from the French fairy tale, things turned out much better than that. But at this particular moment the Merchant in the story, as in life,did not know this.

BEAUTY ASKS FOR A ROSE

[to the Saviour of all saviours]

only bring me the Rose of all roses
clouded pink in winter's storms
the Arctic rose no one can comprehend

or reconfigure

the high serene silver
rose confounding moonlight
recovered by kings in flight

from their lost kingdoms

the one that is mirrored in
the starry triptych
whenever I close my eyes

only bring me the cardinal Rose, the rose of
hidden music, scrolled and scrolled the
wounded Rose

the silence of petals streaming
the heart within the heart within the heart

mary angela douglas 3 december 2009


La Belleza Pide Una Rosa

[al Salvador de todos los salvadores]

sólo me trae la rosa de todas las rosas
rosa empañado por las tormentas de invierno
la rosa del Ártico que nadie puede comprender
o reconfigurar
la plata sereno alta
se levantó la luna de confusión
recuperado por los reyes en vuelo
de sus reinos perdidos
el que se refleja en
el tríptico de estrellas
cada vez que cierro mis ojos
sólo me trae la rosa cardenal, la rosa de
música oculta, para desplazar y desplazar la
Rosa herida
el silencio de los pétalos que ondeaban

el corazón dentro del corazón dentro del corazón

mary angela douglas 3 december 2009

CHACONNE FOR FEDERICO

[for the poet, Federico Garcia-Lorca]

the paper birds won’t sing here anymore
the crystal birds can’t fly – they say
the moon is leaving home

and I don’t know why

the children turn away
from oranges from sweets from ruby fountains

how softly the angels
carried their carnations
on the day
your windmill was repealed-

Quixote having no tears left
bowed down under
a moon of shaded green…

how stars of pomegranate
should rain down
and the silver sea grow olive-colored

as it did beneath your gaze-
but words can no longer be found
for so many things and the soul sheds

golden wings and aureoles, accordingly.

unknowingly.

they will not ambush
your hidden flights of jade
poetry my wounded bird poetry
my wounded bird

mary angela douglas 17 november 2009


Una Chacona por Federico
[ Federico Garcia-Lorca]

los aves de papel no quieren cantar nunca mas
los aves de cristal no pueden volar - dicen que
la luna se va para siempre de

su hogar

y yo no se porque
los ninos se alejan
de naranjas de dulces

de las fuentes de rudi.

que suave han llevado
los angeles sus claveles
en el dia en que

su molino de viento ha revocado.

Quixote

a quien no le quedan lagrimas
se inclinaron abajo de
su luna de verde sombreada.

como estrellas de granada
deberian llover
y la mar de plata debe cambiar

a color de aceite tanto
como hago
abajo de su mirada-

pero las palabras
ya no pueden ser
encontradas

por tantas cosas y la alma derrama
sin saber
las alas de oro y las aureolas-

ellos no van a emboscarte
sus vuelos escondidas de jade

la poesia mi ave herida
la poesia mi ave herida

mary angela douglas 17 november 2009/Spanish translation april 24, 2011

PRAISING THE BOOK PEOPLE

["the faint whisper of a turned page"
-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451]

would you sell your heart's desire
would you chop it up for
firewood in the bitter cold

or throw it over the bridge
sparking futile distances,
to spare yourself?

how would you choose
sensing the end was near,
from all these things so rare:

what to pawn
what to carry on your back,
kind refugees of this beleaguered Word?

there is a library in the mind
where books like jewels shine
where we could surpass

the farthest runners to the edge of Light
leaning over the rim of its deep well
whenever a second universe appears.

not to betray this universe, but
to shield it from inquisitional fire
or the permafrost of
brutal disregard

we choose this role, even to be lost,
tearing out the blank pages of ourselves
inscribing them with ink that

can't be traced

in love with cherry-scaped language
we'll memorize it all
warned in dreams to depart

another way
bartering life for art
reading reading reading to

fuse the broken continents within
beauty and truth, once again,
our touchstone

through harsh midnights of sheer
inarticulation
we stand guard

refusing to stone the messengers
sheltering angels, unaware
weaving bright meaning
into our banished souls

as on the first day

mary angela douglas 13 october 2008

ST, FRANCIS SOWED HIS BLIEBIRDS IN THE SKY

St. Francis sowed his bluebirds
in the Sky
when the lemon wind was never

far away and all these fables
I have held to my heart
as flowers freshly gathered.

now the small doves coo
at Light's own window
and the lavender frescoed

moments all pass by
in every green-graced field
I once believed in-

but I am an hourglass in His hand
I am a bluebird in the Sky
St. Francis,

on the lemon wind-

mary angela douglas 6 october 2009

TO EVERY POET EVERY DAY

as many times as the spectrum shatters
and undeniable music is disbarred or
never brought to light in the first place

by those who stuff their ears with snow

or anything they find at hand -
only not to hear you-

that many times and more,
a hidden star retracts;
your misread nebula hangs fire-

and the broken poem spins backwards-

bone-china,
off the shelf.

you are left whispering
pure gemstone words

in the aftershock of so much withering.


very real nightingale*, hold on
while hemorrhaging light--
it may be that the Emperor will live

though signs are few and an army of
miscreant words is blocking

is blocking the one good road to the Palace.
God's state of mind and your
can't be that far apart
whenever you are sifting through the rubble-

beyond all help and
cherishing every shard that
it may be

one piece still of the language
you have left.
oh living the jigsaw Anguish

in this way
are you still there?
mending the broken crockery of worlds:

again?

mary angela douglas 14 september 2009









*reference to Hans Christian Anderson's fairytale: The Emperor's Nightingale




mary angela douglas 14 september 2009

THE NOVEL IS A DOLLHOUSE

[dedicated to my sister, Sharon, a great pianist and:the English teachers who rationed my adjectives sorry, still not going to prune them back!]

the novel is a dollhouse

in which characters can be
rearranged
they have bendable joints

whether they are in the parlour
with the mauve carpet

or positioned happily by the rose

sprigged taffeta curtains
in the grandmother's sitting room with its

rose leaf-green

tinted walls its
tiny hatboxes on the topmost shelf
its delicate tea service polished on Saturdays

and the petit-fours on displa

that somehow never get eaten
(they're for Company)

the novel is a dollhouse
especially on holidays
you can see:
the minuscule bubble-lit

Christmas tree
and forever the fairy lights
at the frosted front-windows

right between the caramel armchair

and the table-top fleur-de-lis lamp
with its circle of butter-cream light illumininating

just as it begins to snow.
(will they ever open their presents?)

in the kitchen off the
dining room stand
the children with their

heaped up plates
of pink divinity candy
on a pattern of

old country roses

(they got straight A's)
they are bewitched
by the poems of Walter De La Mare...

the rest of the doll

are downstairs watching TV
probably "The Wonderful
World of Color" in black

and white or "Brambly Hedges",
getting banana splits and finger paints all
over the rag rugs, playing
with matches as best they
can, waving the butter-knife and
taking turns

running with the pinking shears

slamming doors.
helping themselves to
the last of the spumoni-

they cheat at Candyland.

and the floppy dog runs

in fired-up curlicued circles
with a chicken-pie je ne sa quois
that Raggedy Ann can't

understand, so she just keeps
smiling, smiling, smoothing her white
pinafore under the shade tree

by the lemonade springs

and the furry dog flies through th
fenced-in yard with the gate left wide open
past the green metal garden chair

the neon nasturtiums
and the bean stalks...

there's the charming sister in cherry-violet velvet-
Belgian-Irish lace-
still seated at the music-box tiny gold piano

polishing off her maple-red Scarlatt
"An American in Paris," and.
"Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" simultaneously-
forever changing music history;.

the glittering sounds are far-reaching-
lifted over the candy-striped swing-set
and the circus tent-

wafting over the mimosas
straight into the Giant's castle
(how very brave)-

while the Lily Pons doll
-in fresh pink organza-
thinks in arias, quickly,

how to save the stage-
and offers her pink-ice earrings for ransom...
but it's too late

the adjective egg timer on the teacher's des
boils over, (not a bicycle bell)...
and means it

mary angela douglas rev. 11 october 2011 from version of 18 august 2009

MY LOST UNICORN WANDERED FAR

[to poetry]

my lost unicorn wandered far
from the tattered tapestry, unseen
to graze in someone else's

dream
the one with the jeweled soul
the one who would eat

from my hand fresh amethysts
every day
poetry, too, is wandering from the world

no longer wanted
living on scraps in
faith-based precincts (faith in what - can't they say?)

they're vivid as ice-cream colors
but they can't recall
the King of all bright words and stars.

but there was no vanishing point
in my picture
there was no heraldic distance ever

and I have looked so far to find you
and take you home
while scavengers remained behind

snipping at the last few
shining threads
since they know better

how the chanson should end
being themselves
such household names

but I know how the song begins
and this small glissando
I hid well in my last pocket

against the dread day of your disappearance
these golden threads I have
wept anew, dealing with so much straw:

remembering the promises made to thieves

entreating the King of Heaven
to make your broken music box -

turn again, this way:
let the storied creature
with the kind and crumpling horn

clomp on before your many-hued gaze
led past confetti corridors
and children's best birthday parties -

home.

where you are breathing the color of roses
where you are breathing the color of roses.

mary angela douglas 31 august 2009

THEY ALWAYS SHOOT THE WENDY BIRD

(for J.M. Barrie)

they always shoot the Wendy Bird when they get

to that

part in the play

the lost boys in the never land of my 

recurrent days.

I wish I could write it another way

I wish that I could straighten the seams

but the scene plays out.

in every dream. or matinee.

maybe it’s just that they’re too tired

or that they had too much to eat

overfilled on sweets and stories with

elaborate endings.

lost in a pirate pretending.

too blind from the glare on the

green blue lagoon

sooner or later she will plummet in blue

her pink sash immaculate;

fair ribbons streaming

and I will awake locked out of dreaming

murmuring on the lawn

how long how long

can this go on?

they always shoot the Wendy Bird

their eyes full of sudden tears

and then they say

they never meant to.

and this occurs for years.

mary angela douglas 13 october 2020

FIRST DEDICATION

(for God my Father, for world wide Poetry,

for each poet in their turn)


you are the ground under my feet
if the ground trembles
you are my ravine

if the ravine crumbles

you are my sea
if the sea dissolves

you are my sky

if the sky falters
you are my star

if the star bursts

you are my Heaven.

these are the words

exactly in their places.
there are no other versions;

though He died for us

He is not dead

He died for love of us

and rose again

whatever is made is made by Him

the poem cannot write itself:

the star could not dream of its own shining

nor the ocean conceive its own tides.

He will abide.

and I, and you

whatever else we do

we will abide in Him.

and our words too.

mary angela douglas 8 july 2009;20 june 2022

HEAVEN''S WORDS FLOWED DOWNWARDS

heaven's words flowed downwards
I saw the crumbling of an
ancien régime

this was my heart.
heaven's words flowed sideways
like the raindrops' beading on the

car windows.
I saw the green-ribboned
the tree-lined highways

pass away
and the roadside attractions
comprising a nation.

somehow-
invisible kingdoms kept
appearing

and words of fresh-wrought flame

though so many will say
shaking their heads like
Job's best friends at my
inscrutable path at the

shining holes in my shoes
"this is dark dark dark"
(you know how it is)

I saw the phoenix in every fire:
this was also my heart
this was also my heart

mary angela douglas 23 july 2009

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAINTED IN A LILAC MIST

[for Anna Akhmatova]

you should have been painted in a lilac mist
looking out to sea yet-
holding the sea within.

you would have stood apart

by an open window, breathing-
immemorial-
the scent of pine trees where
another poet walked-

hearing the sound of the sea

holding the sea within,
its dove-grey caesuras
meted out so carefully, elegantly

like the steps to the fairytale
castle and the end of the story;
your raspberry syllables spilling over

where there could be no decrees;

with your friend who loved Africa
and drew giraffes on your school
slate, possibly, who hated raspberry

jam even then;

with your small son playing

learning to walk in the
pine-needled shade;

with your other friend, who loved life

and pure delight, praising its syllables
of true delight and small feasts managed

in distress: a tin of sardines, Armenian grapes,

a miracle;
banished like a real prince:
by his side, his starling wife
hid all his poems in crummy saucepans -

and in her heart ever after

o darkened wing - o muse

o hidden stars half-turning into fire,
Cassandra, who is listening

like snow it all disappeared

shining into a farther sea
inside you
after nothing like a Golden Age
no one in any languag

can explain.

I sit at my kitchen table in America

as pale as you were theb at the
height of Terror,

Anna Akhmatova, getting paler by
the minute
with other golden refugees of a
free nation where we are assigned

to some island of misfit toys

the kitchen radio proclaims

"A Great Nation deserves Great Art"
I think sometimes

great art deserves a great nation;

I'm

selling my books off, one-by-one, to live;

when I get to the last book I'll go
live under a pine tree and make
books out of pine bark

I tell myself this when it gets a little

dark

but this morning

you shine on my momentary wall
the color of buttermilk
looking for Russia, still-

looking for an open window

for the sound of the sea
for an undeniable clarity
that can't be bought or sold...

Anna Akhmatova.

ask God for me

if you don't know yourself,
is it anywhere in the world

or only in

the next poem

that we live-


mary angela douglas 18 june 2009;20 june 2022

SHONE

we are leaving behind
books that are unwritten
children who won't be born.

we are leaving

the unweeded gardens the
high pavillions of
peerless starlight

and much that is unleavened.

you may be asked in Heaven
why you abandoned in

bright midsummer the

cream colored cottage and the
strawberry vine

leaving the teacups

scattered,
taking
not even your books that opened at
the same page always

when the dormer winds blew...

was it war or famine

or the curdling moon
was it the witch with
the poisoned apple with her combs
of pale green diamonds like no other April...

my unregarded words?

or were you just filling time
with music only angels heard,

the singing bone-

when the sad, unaccountable distance-

shone?

mary angela douglas 29 August 2011/1 may 2009

HERE IS THE HARBOUR WHERE THE RUBY SHIP

[for Amanda Sullivan on a beautiful photograph she composed]

here is the harbor where the ruby ship

docks with its curios long-forgotten

with its bolts of

hidden brocade, its doll finery
and tangerines
its rose of attar* and

its ambergris; its bears of little or
no trepidation
its dolls with eyes that close
and open

on the fairytale reprised
in waves smoothed beneath us
like spun glass.

here are the peppermint towers
of former graces, bracing the river
and its silk-screened sky-

the hold where the jeweled
nightingale is free:
the soul's music-box in tune

and every reflection is reflecting
a happiness vivid and undisguised
and buildings white as cream arise

on the banks of former desolations.
and non-industrial uses of the day.


and everything is a surprise
but perfectly pictured as in the heart
where no one loved
need ever depart

mary angela douglas 2 may 2009

*rose of attar is attar of roses reversed to indicate the photograph's mirroring waters.

WOULD YOU DIE FOR THE SONG THAT YOU ARE SINGING?

(dedicated to Susan Boyle because she sings just this way)

would you die for the song that you are singing
would you go down with the ship
to set it on dry land-

critics are always on hand
true audiences are few
but you can go on only

at one price:
even if the stage is bare
speaking your life into
more than just the wind

beyond the approval of
yesterday's friends-
even with nothing with no one
to show for it - belonging - nowhere-

weeping, weeping into only the brightening air

with no one left to forgive,
if you die for the song you are singing,
you will live

mary angela douglas 24 april 2009

IT IS NIGHT IN THE EMERALD CITY

it is night in the Emerald City
I don't know why I am writing you
this letter

the green stars sparkle up ahead
but is this cause for celebration?

there are multitudes onstage

but no one in the audience
and we were standing
so magically by

in April's dappled shade:

waiting for the cue to go on

yet birds still trill

and in the stillness
golden poems are launched.

who will christen them,

will you?
at night in the Emerald City
it's so hard to sleep:

they are codifying everything.

I'm burning down the corner

of another unknown page:
here's fuel for a winter's instant!
last evening from my window
I heard the starry sonnets muted
and

bright visions so indicted

that I wept tears of emerald.
I don't know when they'll
banish this

it could be soon

but I'll love still
from universal distances
in God's own grace and conversation-
we're not locked inside this maze.

I'm certain you'll remember

performances are overbooked
at night in the Emerald City
you have to call ahead

all iridescence is forbidden

I can't weep tears of emerald

I just watch the stars,
not the regime

down to the last bright ember

mary angela douglas 7 february 2009/rev. 11 february 2010