Learning To Say Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I understood that songs could come to you

out of the thickets, the shifting of the green

leaves and boughs and trees


Cezanne like, the blue; and the yellow

domicile yellow as cream

and the pine abstractions


and deeper the cypress than anything

far, far into the woods beyond the world

said Morris mystically and Sidney Lanier.


and I the child in the porch swing

early and late when the blue dusks came down.

what is time asked the child can I hold it


in my hand and will it melt

"into the pink sands" said her mother

and then she was gone.


so long! I cried

thinking it was in a dream

and some of it was.


which am I, remembering now,

I could not tell you for sure.

but light is sifting down the boughs


in a heavy darkness I am not innured

magnolia like the stars

are large as the heart


slowly unfolding

learning to say oh,

goodbye.


mary angela douglas 18 august 2018