Pasting The Book Of Hearts By The Paper Doll Stream Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

"Thou tellest my wanderings; put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in Thy book? "

Psalm 56: 8, The Holy Bible

"Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God."

Psalm 84: 3, The Holy Bible

[in memory of my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas]


pasting the book of hearts by the paper-doll stream

I paper-cut the moon and the glitter from antique cards

hoping it would make You appear too soon, my Lord

and the hedges bloom long before spring,

time-lapsed, lilting into a golden light.


It's the perfect silhouette of a world in Hans

Christian Anderson I still seek or the onion towers'

reckoning In full colour: scarred are the skies the wide world over

for the poet blinded for his imagination.

yet he still sees, spurring the moon bright horses on

for our Lady of the Fleur-di-Lis and the rose gardens:

toward her never collapsing lucidity.


and now, and now again I grieve on the scissoring cello

of the fairytale ellipse like Shoshtakovich-

recording the eclipse at land's end.


I ‘ll make you apple blossoms pink waxed
on blue crayoned pages

and later, the cherry repetitions of a heart in construction paper

but now, no longer measuring the cocoa out at Christmastime

the xxxs and the oooos…

whole countries seem to be cut off overnight

from the crystalized candy-cane singing, the Holy Night

she is so far from the land.


and God goes collecting the rosewater tears

of the daughters the daughters the daughters

and the pink dominoes of the childhoods

falling, falling through your 40 year misdiagnosis and

the country you used to come from.

let it all be momentary:

do not weep ma mere


in the courtyard where the artist

condemned to linger

traces on the air allotted him

the roses no one sees and colors them in.


we will archive everything

In poems without number

convinced of an afterlife

pale pink and blue

where megaphones cannot blare

this cannot be (they mean your soul)

and neighborhoods


turn to pour the stone cold kitchen coffee out

never dreaming you're right there in a dress of pure magenta.

a smile like Alencon…

one instant ever after…


I'm weeping paper lace in an endless stream

to wrap the flowers for a small bouquet

for the one in a thousand's thousand

who knew how to read the music this way:


it's long ago we played in the late afternoon

that the world could not be banished anymore

that someone would recognize our Fate

and that we still hear our mothers calling

from an orchid twilight

all the way from Eden or the State Hospital.


mary angela douglas 30 november,2,3 december 2012