Pie Keepers. Cake Savers. Poetry Makers. Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

pie keepers.
cake savers.
oh who will bless the poetry makers

in their obscure kitchens?
they store their gem-starred jams
laid in before fresh winters of

neglect, perhaps
in the cool cool larders where
their suns never set and the

sunset colours remain
of the mint, the hawthorn apple;
or rose geranium.

pie keepers.
cake savers.

how delicious to the Holy Ghost
their uncelebrated jellies shine;
consider them from time to time

whenever you weary of the garlanded
forever making merry from the dais of
the same-old same old.

the minor poets
in their obscure kitchens
over the hot stove

and solitary at dusk
branching into the wild cherry

mary angela douglas 3 august 2014

Note on the poem: What a difference a word makes. At first I had the last line as 'breaking into the wild cherry' and I almost heard my mother say, bubbling over with laughter from the Unseen: 'you'd better change breaking to branching or else it will sound like the poets are breaking into the wild cherry preserves, 'pigging out' on their own larder', when what I meant to say is that the jellies keep piling up like their poems, unread and untasted.

Give me an award. I spared them from embarrassment. And myself, since I definitely consider myself a minor poet. In English there's Shakespeare and the people who translated the Bible for King James. And then there's the rest of us.

I'm just happy God lets me play in the poetry sandbox at all.
Especially in the one under the shade tree, in summer.