On Not Naming The Disasters Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

things that cannot to us seem real take shape

and we are asked to adapt to a new vocabulary

to accommodate the strange shape the puzzle piece makes


that didn't come with the Christmas, birthday box yet that


we are required to acknowledge.

I don't feel words that way but as clouds

tinted by amethyst light that glints and is gone


before you can see it long enough in your field of vision

to call it a jeweled name why should we name disasters, hurricanes

and bring things to those altars as though we were primitives again


when God is the medicine for all these ills in the running streams

the pines, and the evergreen.


this I will not do but keep the shine on the water clear

inside myself deep down as Shakespeare said once,

to the edge of doom.


mary angela douglas 15 april 2020; 20 may 2020