Premonition Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

your mind with its stained glass
its reverent fissures, cul de sacs
its lime green neighborhoods

peridot coloured moons
they want to exhume, examine
and ask you: please say back to me

a few minutes later the words:
penny, apple, table
and of course you do

you will
but the drill keeps on going;
they'll ask you to count backwards

to subtract the current atmosphere

from the one in which you were free.
oh it's all for your own good
they say benevolently perhaps.

how could it be
when I hear the jeweled bells ring out
from the distances in peril.

mary angela douglas 20 august 2016