So What If We Threw Words Into The Air Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

SO WHAT IF WE THREW WORDS INTO THE AIR

so what if we threw words into the air

repairing nothing

they were all we had

aspirant jugglers that we were

but sometimes merry

spinning our plates

while Time waits at the Gate,

the garden one.

beyond it are the Fates

spinning the gold of Shakespeare,

Keats, the clarion greens of Rilke,

all those letters.

from high towers he called the angels

and his words grew little wings

and they have gone so far

into my heart

as to become a landscape

littered with stars.

we wrote in cloud breath on the panes

of Christmas;

punctuated in offices on our own

keeping the dream of appled home

amid the tiny exiles.

the sword upraised from the Lady's lake.

brush your rosebud tears away

for what seems to have come to you

too late. the amber birds of Mahler rise

to stay your executions.

maybe the heart gives out,

but Music remains

like the golden ball in the well

the frog kept fetching back

alas alack the goose queen, princess, cried

stepping out in the moonlight on the Other Side

where she never can grow wise

because she can't leave lace like

wonder, ever, behind.

the clouds shaped like the bracelet charm

pianos.

mary angela douglas 11 september 2019