For Martin Burke: Snow Dreamed Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[for the fine Irish-Belgian poet, playwright Martin Burke, in memorium. and for his Marie-Anne]


snow dreamed.
dreamed it could become white roses,
lost brides

sudden angels.
snow dreamed it was something else besides
still somehow, snow

the flower without stem
the pause in music;
waiting to begin

floating it longed to fly

flying it longed to lie on fences,
rooftops, to become the town
the plains

never to turn to rain
and weeping.
snow dreamed and dreamed and dreamed

it was our sleeping

in bouquets extravagantly cold
and danced on the mittens of little children.
of ship avowals it dreamed at sea

and floating with the waves
it disappeared and who could tell it then
from foam

from Praise

and still, it dreamed until we all were snow
and delicate and forevers
branching and branching...

mary angela douglas 6 december 2017