I'm Stitching Down The Words You Gave Me Lord Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I'm stitching down the words you gave me, Lord

from earliest dictionaries of sun and rain

the rose garden reverie, the Plains


the crescendos of the wind

snow under glass and shaken

into Christmases,


I pray


let them not abscond with them again

as the magic carpet I have traveled on since

You know when


since earliest days could be

yanked from me, leaving me to shift

it all to inwardness and start again but when


leaving me only the free fall

into eternities where

how can I do anything


but cloudlike, speak your name through starless air

once they have taken then

the particular language


you gave only me and filched

the golden apples from the page, the orchards

brimmed with snow in winter or Spring



gone completely gone

and the new worlds


that vowels formed in just Our way

the glow of consonants like comets

signaling the end


and still, my Joy! the forgeries won't win

the beginning Alpha

where bright words begin.


mary angela douglas 18 july 2019