The Jeweled Way Is Gone Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

THE JEWELED WAY IS GONE

maybe holy angels then inspired us

building up our defenses of beauty

against the cruelties lapping at our door

this was what the grownups called playing.

with all conceivable blocks we built the playhouse

the one we would live in evermore

when the storms came battering

the trick or treat scares,

silos for the candy corn.

Ive thought a lot about it

how the green trees made our grove

long after the leaves, even the trees

were felled.

and how the wishing wells in the picture books

looked so realistic

we believed in so much then.

now I think of little children

little children in school

day by day forced to call it the environment

when for us it was the faery woods.

what is gained I wonder

stripping the branches bare of the gold leaf

the veins of gold, the ramifications

and the ramparts too

of invisible kingdoms.

the jeweled way of measuring the worlds.

mary angela douglas 19 september2018