Sounding The Channel Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

"Though I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am nothing.' from 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, The Holy Bible, King James version.

forgive me if I speak in dreams not of my own devising
that they just come to me that way and furnish the lock but no key and am sometimes rather cloudy
not clear in my meaning it isn't that I don't care if you understand
it's just that the visionary is beautiful to me and a country long sought I don't know how to live any other way in any other place
caught between worlds unable
to tie my shoelace on the common pavement
forgive me I know I ought to consider always the words of St. Paul
to speak with love or not at all I get carried away by the elaborate and
the beautiful vanishing everywhere around me and I cannot help but mourn
these inscrutable losses.
words are for love, for charity, for kindness most of all. I know this is true.
my Grandmother taught me the Golden Rule but something else as well,
a longing for music and for music in the sound of language as well
and I cannot help it I want the moon of it and the ladder to it as well
as depicted in one of Blake's etchings, the dear and brave man called mad
because he listened to the voice of God to HIM.
I want to listen for the inward sounding of the channel of which I am only a part;
there are depths and shallows there.
forgive me, everyone, please, for the shallows.

mary angela douglas 20 december 2020