Customary Castles In The Rain Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

bouquets of odd numbered flowers are best
the guidebook read.
no further information

for the Kingdom of Rus,
one page torn out for tourists.
a scrap, . not a page:

don't offend. don't offer

a dozen roses, iris.
mend stockings by firelight
Cinderella said in the guidebook

she never wrote,
old candlelight is best,
from candles that won't wane.

Grandmother said be careful
when it rains; but you're not
sugar, you won't melt.

but kingdoms melt sometimes.
panoramic eggs of hardened sugar,
never.

looking through there's a tiny castle,
turrets of a crimson hue most
beautiful at sunset.

there I will come
when Spring has flung her odd numbered
roses over the landscape

where fountains glow
in courtyards I can't
recall the names of

even if I could pronounce them:
sweetly folkloric are
the uses of adversity...

I will be circumspect
cherishing my one
custom of the country

making sure, arranging it with God
far in advance that
the flowers are of the requisite, the pristine number.

and the overarching stars.

mary angela douglas 1 october 2015