EPHEMERAL

it is ephemeral
and twilight
girls in the blueness
pale in their summer's
unknowing
weep into my consciousness
but they do not mourn
for the subtle deaths
of their own shadows.

As
carnation-coloured the sun
bleeds softly into night
they are bleached with wonder
carelessly in the last lights
blurred shining as the sheen
of unpetaled flowers
dreamed of, yet unsought
they move, holding carefully
the velvet of themselves.

this moonblazing
diminishes everything
something has unclosed my heart
and let some darkness in

I am inarticulate
clanging madly
(but not ungentle)
at the gated stars.
because it was ephemeral and twilight
and the universe has unstrung me.

Mary Angela Douglas
Fontbonne College, St. Louis
April 8, 1970