A Song Of Ascents (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

["Ah, Christ I love you rings to the wild sky"
-Allen Tate (from Sonnets to Christmas) ]

climbing His laddered orchards to the sky,
Christ is the wound I live in till I die;
the one of pure gold, the one

unfurnished room I cannot be thrown from

why is the why I keep on asking still so
hard to find among all orphaned syllables in disguise;
the thing you did far better than

anyone has ever done on the tumbrelled way: leaning into
our eyes, you rose.
why do they want to drag you back each time of day

again and again to that same hill - skeptical of
Glory; eyeing your splintered heart with the old surmise
of the selfsame jackdaw disorders: reprised

and preening.
and everything is
as though you had never finished what you started.

I'm climbing your gleaming orchards to the sky-
the ladders kicked out from under-
following the deep marks in the snow the

deep marks in the snow the
ghost of water beckoning in the sun-
the chivalrous pall-

the starry storied passage through the endless ruins-
to the only country I can recognize
at all

mary angela douglas november 18,19 2012; 10 october 2023