Song For Therese Of Lisieux (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

keep me as the apple
plum peach
apricot and

muscadine of Your Eye
in all the hills, hillocks
burrows, rabbit hutches

flower-filled canyons on
Your green stone;
count me as all your stars,

extant-
though each one's carved
with hearts and wings to burn and
flow away...

I favor blue morpheus wings in
Heaven- please remember I
don't want to intrude

whenever you're painting your
rainbows' cherry after cherry
double-hinged but wouldn't you

rather make
for old time's sake:
another flood of roses?

remember that I am Your dove
though pressed in a leatherbound
book of saints and tissue-veiled

though edged all around in obdurate Gold-
that I may live alway with you
my Jesus, infant Jesus, lullay.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2011; 5 october 2023