How Shall I Teach My Heart Snow Silence Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

How shall I teach my baffled heart snow silence
In moments when the air glistens with
So much absence
As to make another universe entire out of it.
All the birds in a muted landscape
Their choirs on hushed wing dazed as if they were become clouds
Strangers to music
Sketched in as if in an exodus from song
And in perilous haste
Cannot bear witness enough it seems of late
When we come to the knowledge
of the poverty of speech, stray rubric of song
in the instant of wrong
failing to meet us coming or going;
When the small fissures start
In the history of the dark.
Let Light keep watch.
Somehow.
Even sans transfiguration.
mary angela douglas 30 may 2024