Cherry Coated Angels (Final Version) * Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

outside the schools of everywhere
I cried:
God opened the book of stars

and I looked up
he opened the book of roses
and I wept, the book of snows

and each, in turn, to me, disclosed
where quarter notes drifted at the
edge of the seas and washed away in

music I breathed in.
fond colors. stay,
like rainbows, melting in a spinning top

on my Grandmother's carpet
just before dinner as I strayed
near the sylvan clashing of pots and pans,
the elven drumming of the rain.

it's the earthenware emblems I know now
and the kiln bright near-blue blaze still
on spring-fed alphabets
greening the glade where hidden
tigers came to drink

the topaz ripples off the everyday
and my Grandfather sharpened pencils fresh
for the appled appliqued school day
as if he were
carving marble.

oh you who must
in every age deny
the clouded and dreaming child as one deluded

who must be changed or die
with his or her petaled forehead pressed
against cool windowpanes of frost-tinged

faery-novas, cherry coated angels-

I won't ever tell you why
God opened the coral
clavier of the skies

and let me play-

mary angela douglas 22-24 august 2010; 2 october 2023

*my image is meant to be angels wearing cherry coloured jackets, not cherry coated as in candy. It was hard if not impossible to make this clear in English without a footnote. I would like to find a language where it would be easy to say this, it must have other wonderful things in it, as well.