The Fairies' Play Revisited Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

in honor or William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream...

here the midsummer frailties shine
and are impearled each time we read
as the dew drops down the soul

and it is jeweled evening
when the play unfolds
or the twilight in between

one dream and another, tissue thin,
Begin! and
is it yours, this clasp on the lock of time

undone? and have all your birthdays come
dressed in the scarlet and the fleeting,
sweet and sweeting?

there is the fairies' entryway,
the portal to the mysterious green
half vanishing, banishing woods

and there the delicate unfolds
in fabulous minstrelsy and bud
and are you trellised with flowers?

is it understood that

these are the hidden hours
made manifest?
where else would we go, and if we could,

exiting from the darkling worlds
and there unfurl fine flags
of the nonpareil

arriving in tangerine array,
in tiny coaches of orange peel
to bask like summer roses far-

from the kingdoms of the real.

mary angela douglas 5 february 2017