Softly, Before Summer (Reposting) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

a poem I wrote as of today, oct 11 2023,53 years ago

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
softly, before summer,
in nets of gold
the water meshes with the sun,
mauve past the end of the stream.
we are the song past the end of our world.


the sun is bleeding

and we are here, also, aging in
the drone of slow thoughts,
in this light.

a small child flings her silk

silhouette
and stones
against the water,
and it flames
mauve, past the end of the stream.
we are this fire past the end of our world.


brief is dreaming before we find,

I know you by not knowing,
sensing only, still believing, ripples
of breathing and being, faces brooding,
merging shadows thrown by the sun

is gone, splashed into vermillion,

vanished, we cannot know.

I know You by not knowing,
the last music pales,
the last thought in the darkening

Spring.

mary angela douglas 7 may 1970

on a picnic with two friends from school by the river
Fontbonne College, St. Louis MO.
contemplating the mystery of life,
Of being in other people, in Nature, and most of all, in God. And
Especially, the mystery of Time itself. I also remember at that time being highly influenced at least in this poem by the poetry of Theodore Roethke.