As If The Sun Had Words Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

for Piper Laurie-
in the alternate gardens of no cinema yet revealed-
on her irreplaceable voice and its musicality-
her incarnations spun of glass, substantially appearing,
irrevocably, memorable.

a tone poem on her jewel-like trajectory in the film,
The Grass Harp...


it's not made of glass and yet it chimes
like the wind through old roses
in a garden from another time:

gardenia watered
through angelic rains-

almost - of china - breakable-
ringed with the fanciful;
making the twilight hour

stand- still-
ghost children, think so-

far away, wavering between Shine and shine
in the brocade of the prismed air

and down the bow of the night's proscenium where

the stars seem to have caught her light.
onstage, on the stage of verities,
simple as a valentine or not-

with scrolled handwriting
you thought you recognized?
was it a dream?

inscribed for someone else's life?
like the debut of flowers in each spring,
a freshness, with a difference -

a painting painted under the one we're used to;
the one we're unaccustomed to feeling, long out of view.
not now-

when suddenly the Soul
feels it was stashed in rooms with no other harps
through centuries:

contriving never to be smashed.

not that contemporary,
something harkens farther back
than anyone can remember rehearsing then:

her song, initialed with unaccountable jewels.
jewels on the surface of everything,

she refracts without even intending to.

and is the world made of crystal, then,
sighed the children, wondering-
with an occasional orchid flare
going up, from the otherwhere

and is it Christmas everywhere or
only where we are snowing?
where can the fountain flow for

such enchantments and can we go there,
please- and far from the broken things-
drenched in the borealis
up past bedtime-

or, is it, the lost languages of birds or
just her standing in a ray of light
filtering through the green-

about to speak

as if the sun had words

mary angela douglas 7 july 2014