For Those I Tried To Find Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

for those I tried to find but then the way doubled back:
the cornstalks rose above the roiling fields
the house we knew with the little porch

disappeared and at my back
all trace of every summer thing I knew
I tried to find through thickets of the years

the old castles

and wept while slogging on
that in such disarray cruel storms removed
the hay pitched sun.

where roses blew,
now there were thorns.

I have torn have torn my only heart
and bent my back under the gloom
knowing that what was once, must

still be there, though far from view.

are you alive? I call to the fairytale statues
under enchantment, bright as the singeing air:
are you alive?

yet there's no answer there

mary angela douglas 11 may 2015