Aspiration Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to my grandfather, Milton Barkus Young on his 123rd birthday in the Heavens who taught my sister and me the stars and how to spell and birdsong, the journeys of St. Paul
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we scatter our words like golden crumbs

upon the fields of once upons

we write until our hands are numb

ourselves, our woes. our joys into seeming oblivion

to stand to stand at last

righted in a seaward wind

upon the gale of Him who sent us

or on land to give the best or what we can

unto the hidden, fearsome Lamb

to stand beneath on some far day

unarguable Resplendence

full up with life's so arbitrary leaven

to kneel from weariness and to pray

in quiet benediction rayed nearer then,

and May by May, flower by flower unfurled

though negligible to

a calculating world, so close to the

celestial fields of Heaven.

mary angela douglas 8 march 2023