Pavane Of The Sleeping Stream Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

in memory of my Grandmother-

and for Judy Collins

it's the pavane of the sleeping stream
the sleeping stream that leads I won't know where
fresh out of the gate like Peter in Prokofiev

I hear the white duck's oboe
I hear the white duck's oboe in a vivid spring
and I follow the sleeping stream

and cut blue lavender flowers
and the snowy green from the snowball
bushes of the neighbors

thinking all things are equal
at least among flowers
I am least among flowers

and follow the sleeping stream
the onyx with its one small star
and lose the pavane never weeping

and the crystal beaded sunsets,

Grandmother's jewelry
in the distance;
I don't even know I'm leaving,

and it's all Rouault in the mists,
the weeping clown, Pagliacci
on glass records and

being the vanishing point of rain
rain on her watered colours
rain upon my face

I can't see dissolving

I am the sleeping stream
I am the piano stowed away by strangers.

mary angela douglas 6 may 2014