In A Tulip Dress In Plato's Cave Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

in a contrary season or so it seemed
words were never good enough.
they might be gold plated,

wine-coloured,
rose-tattooed with cockatoos,

rainbow banded
as bubbles floating away from you alas,

all of these at the same time.
speaking to one or a thousand's thousand
always you went home later afterschool's
apple cheeked child
wondering what went wrong almost
used to it.

or back to the office where the
typewriter broke down the keys
all jammed and nobody knew
how to change the ribbon,
least of all you.

or just getting off the bus
no straight shot, either:
headed into the tall grasses
when the bus driver through
the still-open door
shouts something after you

something uncomplimentary so the remaining passengers
can hear it and the people already home across the street
just sitting down to their fried eggplant and
saying: I told you so....

so you feel like strawberry ice melted-
the tag-end of the birthday guests
with the most crumpled favor.
anyway. you say to yourself. anyway...

they've let you know something was missing;
something you couldn't put your finger on
even in white velvet, empire-styled
with real pearl buttons

even if you had assorted fingers
in every flavour like bright icicle pops
and could deliver by heart free ice cream
and the history of poetry in sand paintings

even if you said nothing at all
it wouldn't be solved.
or dissolved like soda pop fizz.

or only nodded.
something was wrong
a thing impossible to pinpoint
by those trading glances over your shoulder
knowingly, their Maybelline arched brows arched
more furrily.

even if you were the one who gave the garden party
and wore the perfect garden party dress: the tulip print:
flounced, with the lime green petticoats;
in the shop window for weeks
(the one with the grass-green sash) .

even if you wrote the Dictionary yourself,
(or had ancestors that did) the first first one
by flint-light struck or scrunching down in Plato's cave

scribbling 'moonlight', whispering, moonlight...
hunched away from the shadow lovers

mary angela douglas 24 may 2014; rev.12 june 2014

P.S. of course the title occured to me relative to the Delmore Scwartz poem as a variation on Plato's Myth of the Cave.
but - my poem occupies entirely different territories than his.