In Exorbitant Moonlight Shining Or When They Allowed Us To Stay Up Past The Usual Bedtime Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

IN EXORBITANT MOONLIGHT SHINING OR WHEN THEY ALLOWED US TO STAY UP PAST THE USUAL BEDTIME

a pure explosion of angelic coincidences met
at the five unlikely corners of my apartment
in parallel space

I cannot find this in Acquinas or in the evening paper
scripted on clouds
their calibration tuned to pinks and violets

trending away from the aqua and the mere orange
are you talking about the sky again
the small child said and sighed
'
the small child with her bouquets of fields' flowers
the occasional tresspassing rose picked
not that the rose trespassed oh never

it was the child on the moonlit lawn
who came across the rose crossing the five corners
of my imaginary street where the traffic lights

burn only emerald
where generations have trodden and yet their gold remains
the goldeness with no leaden after thoughts

small cameos of Hopkins reading in tranquility
sprung into rhythm on the page by the least thing
angels at midnight corners

surmised with a reading glass
the sudden magnification
of everything holy

understood everywhere all at the same time
suddenly or as time melting, snowing all over the roses.

or on the one exempted child with the single rose picked
in exorbitant moonlight

mary angela douglas 7 july 2018