Meditation On Death And The Early Violets Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

MEDITATION ON DEATH AND THE EARLY VIOLETS
we wait our turn to go home
as children wait for the ferris wheel at the fair
anticipating if I could only touch the pink clouds,
BE in the air
what then would I be
or where or how
so many summers passed we wonder our arithmetic
could last and it's a different word problem
now than when all we had to do was figure out how many
apples among how many friends and with bright illustrations
it could all be divided into
so we wait and in our dreams there is a kind of summation where
it's snowing bushels of moons and the orchards have lost
innumerable blooms
they lie on the ground past all pink thundering or is it apricot
I have dropped the shimmering skein of my own imagery
or forgotten to lock the stitches in by knotting the thread
and I dread the colorful unraveling of all I ever said
thought or loved and I wish for some apotheosis instead
some rose embroidered progression up a handy ladder
propped up against bright hearted Infinity
where I could step lightly from this skin into the
everlasting one where song will be effortless and yet,
again, somehow it was for me on this earth
the only easy thing to sing amid the ruins.
to call the beauteous things departing back to me.
the early violets. the riddle of Time so blissful in music
the princess could never resolve.
mary angela douglas 25 april 2021