What Can I Have To Do With Battle Stations Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

what can I have to do with battle stations

wearing the world on my sleeve like a heart

I used to do that

thinking it would matter

the world is the world

there is only one Saviour

I am not the Saviour

I am the same girl I was earlier

happy to stand in the wind on a hill at sunset

all by myself

and the wind feels only as if

God sent it

and it needs no translation

it is to me

the feeling of freedom

of purity, of light

a feeling like music

that carries your soul

but not too far

so that you are still somehow

anchored on earth

still here with the starlight overhead

sometimes disguised by late indigo clouds

and you want to write in their purple ink somehow

on a tablet of the evening sky

feelings too numerous to mention

thoughts like tears

or the birth of flowers

the presence of flowers

before this disappears

close enough to where you still

may go back and go home

like a child who wants no other place to be

and softly, firmly close the door.

mary angela douglas 21 november 2023