When We Were Telling The Beautiful Stories Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

When we were telling the beautiful stories
Under the linden, the linden trees
These were the stories we made to believe
The earth was not
as cruel as it seemed
we made up a world
We dreamed and dreamed
Ourselves right into it
Even as told
To be safe and free so cherished, consoled
With pictures of beauty, and borders of gold
And all of the fairy lore to beguile us
The hummingbird eye and the silver stylus
To write at the focal point colours all wheeling
The mystical, magical, limitless feeling
The field of vision beyond our ken
The realms of always what may have been
What yet may well be
The Spring of all Springtides
And infinite ease
The christening fairies, the angels beside us
The dear departed to cheer and guide us
And day by day our sorrows dispelled
We lived in the world we made ourselves
Oh in the cherry tree under the stars
We lived where the children were crossing the bar
And made them merry on a silver ferry
With peppermint sticks and castanet clicks
We dipped from a gourd a lemonade well
We lived in the world where there was no hell
Where everything kindly had come at last
No tremor of shadow no winter blast
No memory at all of the anguished past.
Fools they cried but their clamour grew less
And we crossed the road to our Father's behest
The stories we made in all of our art
Broke through to the heavenlies
Made us our Ark.
mary angela douglas 6 september 2024