JANE EYRE

[to Charlotte Bronte]


Dove grey is the unfolding sky
above the lucid dreaming of her soul
shaken- still awake at midnight
the singular one in the household
to show


there is no love without truth
and she must leave, she knows.
stern conscience holds her lantern in the rains
and all she sees is God through torrents, through disdain,
through all the villages begging bread

from the living and the dead
from those who feign.
from bakers, tradesmen who won’t comprehend
she is the soul’s white flame
not derelict.


once she was walking down a faery lane
that ripened into summer's gold.
once she was painting ships without a rudder
pale green and foundering in an icy sea


somehow, still at liberty in the austere-extravagant imagination-
far above her given station
but not, oh not yet free.


ah, now, Lord Jesus, come and see
the frail figure lashed to the landscape
in no watered silk, in her wilderness


and to the hilt:

indomitable in Thee.
mary angela douglas 9 april 2013 rev. 28 march 2017;25 may 2019;rev 23 september 2020.