Della Robbia And Other Things (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to a dry fountain

small birds came to drink
when holes were punched in a daylight sky
and the blue of old plaster flew as if it were the wind.

and an eggshell quiet shattered in a dream
of the whispered sonnets
freezing through the trees

and I said only, I do not lie
to the dry fountain where the small birds came to drin
in the Park you may remember or not at all.

and a small twig breaks that was already broken
and nothing scurries through the last leaves on the groun
where small birds shiver near a glazed stream

or lodge in the holes punched in the sky
and sing through the end of the punches thrown
in delicate aqua or marine

where an eggshell quiet shattered in a dream
of the glacial sonnets freezing through the trees
and the ghost of Mary Stuart counting all her beads

and whispering
deliver my blue soul from the cracked marble of the world

mary angela douglas 31 january 2013; 25 april 2023