At Home By The Rivers Of Time Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I always had trouble with geometry

lost among the wildernesses of planes

no grass grows green here

there are no soft clouds but only disdain

for me who cannot keep up with the rest of the class.

but I must measure everything

perpindicular to the classroom floor

where my heart sinks like a sunset

whenever I am called on to answer for

whatever it is that cannot fly anymore

I don't understand

what I am doing here at all

I think of rhombus and trapezoid

as circus animals, animal crackers

perhaps they will escape with me

feeling less than small

maybe this is some kind of paradox practice

for the future when I cannot find

the door painted as the mist by the Impressionists

or take on the incidence of points in space

as though they were planets or phantoms...

to live like this...

and I, a banished princess from Andromeda

I do like to imagine the world with no angles

to imagine at Christmas I will secretly change

all the angles to angels who know

what Euclid did as a child on Saturdays

was he allowed to blow bubbles, watch crisp

cereal and cartoons, grow soggy?

was he ever bored with this

was he really a real person

I smash the book closed

and all the figures 2.3 to 40.5 are further crushed

but not like crushing a rose in a book

no rose could live here even as a momento

losing all colour while shorn of meanings

all the gardens rectangular black holes

averse to light

to the doorways painted as a mist by the Impressionists

that must exist, if only we could find them

to exit, to recover our souls

the soul of everything

to breathe the fullblown Spring

as if we were flowers or

the cheerful ferns who factored nothing

but mild sunshine, at home. by the rivers of Time

mary angela douglas 18 february 2023