Should This Poem Live Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

should this poem live?
I wished that I could carve in stone
rare words that would shine beyond the time allotted me
not that I knew ought of carving
but something should last that once was me
not crumble so easily into the sea, neglect, a something
neither heard nor seen with few witnesses and then, oh none.
if I could have I would have wept words away
and left off carving anyway, I was not schooled in tools
and highest beauty in the smallest flower dies there is
not one that will not bend its stalk and cease to be
an image in a reflecting stream no more though gloriously it lives today.
but from the question I could not turn away
something there still was left to say
should the sound of my voice to myself even fade
surely what had the imprint of my heart cannot fade away
carved or not, relegated to some cobwebbed shelf
or not in print at all beyond my scrawl on paper
on a summer's day
hardly a breath in between one note and another and yet
though I felt my soul was a meadow mist, even more obscure
what I wrote or meant to write from feelings fountaining and pure
was a thing a wrought thing that could not be unwrought
even as a fleeting thought
as a gesture of a hidden love it came to say something
however imperfect so that God could lift it into the Heavens,
a small cloud singing on..
and full of little birds
mary angela douglas 12 december 2023