To The Great Poets No Longer Remembered Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

did words flow like vapor away from us
perhaps they cried in their ghostly sleeves
winter's captives, ephemera

inscribed in dews
and then the fields cut down.
a poem is launched and then disappears

along with the sound of it, the view
into ionospheres in no one's Lost and Found
a poet is not heard from.

years. centuries go by.
epochs.
why were they here

if we have forgotten them so soon.
reinventing the wheel of words
in simple tunes just to say

it all begins with us, brand new
as though their opulence had not been.
but every wind carries you to me

oh words of elaborate grief of
jeweled jubilations strewn
there in the orchards of the Other Side

you have transcended
your demise sheer brides of language
and the secret flowers bloom.

the inner verities still true.
our half hatched jigsaw selves
murmuring murmuring

we will return to you.

mary angela douglas 23 july 2017