Perhaps They Think Us Scattered Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

perhaps they think us scattered

but light itself is scattered like a veil of opals

by God Himself through so many prismed raindrops

all the time perhaps you think one thought does not connect

to another in a reasonable blueprint in our minds

but then we're not making blueprints, but song

and in the multiplicity of notes, the veering back

to childhood themes and variations on a star

we come to no decisive point but dissolve into dreams.

and thus, we are happy in a world beyond our means.

you in your scheming to deride us propose

we are silly and will never attain the pinnacles

while we admire the blue lights over the hills

cast by twilights we can never cease warbling about

you think from your armchair in your study the cigar smoke curling around

your head in ordered hieroglyphics much to be admired.

but I know the roses twine in me and in old stories of the antique kind

there are so many primrose bordered paths that do not betray.

what is so inconstant as woman grand operas say

to the point of tedium. yet in our wandering, wondering souls

God does at times make his abode and finds relief from schoolroom lectures

in our multicoloured, our charmed and chattering gardens.

mary angela douglas 26 february 2020