The Dream Of The Little Playhouse Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to my sister, Sharon F. Douglas who will know
what I mean, intuitively! ]

why was it so endearing, enduring,
the dream of the little playhouse?
the secret place.

where no one would find you
at least, not until dessert!
when you washed your face and hands

in the crystalline stream just behind it.
and wear rhinestones and everything
and be the Queen of it, always.

Yes! Your Majesty.
green shutters, no make them

pale blue; a pink roof darkening
at sunsets only to mauve.
you are in love from childhood

with a place that doesn't exist.
a place you can never find
except in your sugarplum mind

where it is always, 'fruit basket, turn over! '
and fields of lucky clover
with the colour wheel on the aluminum

Christmas, Christmas tree you

wanted to live near forever; the rainbow
shifting endlessly, never dimmed in the skies.
with the lemon drops in the entry way

in a light green jar, no make that, tangerine.
(the candies, or the jar, we laughed in-between
dawdling spoonfuls of our cereal)

(will the rainbows get soggy when it rains?)
(will the grass stains ever come out?) and
you have strawberries on your knees

from skating on the Seven Seas
whenever they freeze over.

and all the books you could ever read
and all the pictures come to life;

the glue on the gummed stars
never coming off
or the valentines, pasted on the trees.

mary angela douglas 6 january 2016

P.S. We used to call the reddened scrapes on our knees 'strawberries' I don't know where this expression comes from or if it even is a bona fide expression in the English language. Grandmother called them strawberries so we did too. It always made me feel better to hear them called that; it took the sting out of the small wound. We used to count them, like rosy red badges of honor. ('I have more strawberries than you do', etc.)