You went down the other stairs
Instead of the usual way, to avoid me—so you could show
How much you hate me. I saw you. I know.
A friend told me the future is unpredictable. And I said no.
I’ve seen the future. The future is the past.
Things around us change, but we don’t. The soul does not change.
I saw you take the other stairs. You are still the same.
You haven’t changed. You love to walk away
Without a word and forget everything, and today
There you were, doing it again—no, trying to do it again.
You never had faith in analyzing the past;
You think to walk away from it, wordlessly and fast.
You walked down the other stairs and I saw,
In that awfully simple moment, the essence of your soul.
You would race off like that when you loved me,
Too enraged, in your sudden mood change, to say goodbye
—And I ran after you, sometimes, in tears.
The blessed can forget the past, but you cannot.
The happy can glide away from the past without trying.
Goodbye, and hello, to the sun. Goodbye, and hello, to the evening sky.
Who recalls the shape of the evening clouds? Or the way
The falling music sounds in the evening? Now tomorrow comes,
And the truly glad escape, without looking back, their sad and fated past.
You recall how the music sounds in the dying evenings, it sounds
In the sadness of your soul, it sounds in the stairs of your soul
Even though you close and lock the doors.
You, who make a great show of leaving the past behind,
Cannot. It lives. And I cannot help you. It still lives in your mind.
The prophecy I spoke to my friend is that we
Are always the same—the future’s peaceful, sweet solemnity
Stretching out to the blessed, is the same peace that I
Find now—in reflection, study and empathy
Of the past I love. But you hate the past
And because of this you suffer now—as you walk with purpose,
Down the other stairs…there you go!
Proud, silent, angry, hateful, steadily and fast
As you did—lovely creature whom I loved!—in the past.
Scarriet 
maryangeladouglas said,
January 1, 2017 at 8:04 am
Happy New Year 2017…
I THOUGHT THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD HAD COME
“then pealed the bells more loud and deep…” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I thought the beautiful world had come
haunting the space that used to be
filled with human misery
and gold to the touch and unfolding as the rose.
soon sighed the angels but not yet
and I couldn’t sleep for remembering
what I could not forget that the beautiful world
is possibly near to each one expecting it
though tempest driven and alone.
keep watch oh my soul I wanted to say
and open the casements in an old fashioned way
and let the spangled air rush through
the rooms of a former bitterness.
and the ghost I was unlatched the stars
where God had healed the inward scars in
the winter air, where it floated, the beautiful world
just out of reach.
tell your children this
in their fine sleep.
that the beautiful world may come.
mary angela douglas 1 january 2017
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
January 2, 2017 at 1:40 am
Very nice poem, Mary.