For Helen Keller, Seeing All Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

spelling the blue clouds indistinguishable from skies

I may come to the sense of things seen never with my eyes

but understood



the leafblown missionary green of woods

the cinnamon fr earth, the blowing tide

the secret tolling of an inner bell



inside all spelling done

I had come to love so well



before they ever ever sang

to me the names of God the sweet mild sun

and then the floods came down



like liquid doves fluttering



in the touch of water and vividness arose

to link my heart to the name of the rose

the utterance divine, all things now



beneath their shapes reveal

the cut of orange and the orange peel

the waves of light illimitable



the message of small birds

the weight and heft of language

on the things unheard.



mary angela douglas 24december 2019