All Storms Leading To Oz (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

remember when school readers used to hold
a suffusion of fairy tales and rocket ships
in one jeweled balance
of the pearl swung day, the day swung up into the clouds
and the day brought golden delicious apples to our doorstep
our doorstep of wine and cream coloured clover;
the fields of stars to the blue cast twilight
our sudden too early yet nostalgias,
Christmas onsets, the Easter lilies tolling
turning the page and we learned to speak in preserving amber,
just about everything, and ate honey encrusted toast
and the honeycomb thick in the early mornings
honeycomb thick and fast upon the bread of the past
I can recall, the slate shadows of afternoons
and tv covered wagons crossing a stream that become a flood
the native tunes the bird tracks in the woods,
the parting of ferns
oh everything we learned
that poem about the mud and the yellow rose
and another one all cat shivery
with the red and gold of leaves
and the pumpkin frights, the child in the quilted bed
up late at night
and comforted by shadow puppets on mysterious walls
but not the rabbits
by the cradle hymns sung lowly
and the wind that is fluted where nobody knows
that called to you in your sleep singing to you alone
of strawberries and the well sewn seam
and little paper cups of ice cream with a wooden spoon
when vanilla tasted so moonbright-velvety
or porch light lamp glow when you were Queen, attended by the pale frenzy of moths
or the milk glass vase with the garden rose entranced us
beyond all Cause, the tinkling, glass bright of Chopin
on Grandmother's studio piano as played by my sister Sharon
and the stories where children ruled and were kind and
even benevolent, and all Time, heaped up with cherries
with gooseberries in the canned fruit cocktail, heavy syrup
all Time was lent to us then
new minted for us to spend willy nilly
as though we had centuries to linger here over summer board games
and be silly in birthday party crowns bedazzling
and most of the time climbing the hills of green
if not, renown
beneath a mulberry sun our laughter full of flowers
won the day and the kite flown stars in vacant lot hours,
all of them, were ours, the heavenly chime of words,
the apple white maytimes, the angels smiling
almost hidden in the pictures.stop motion scene:
the birds of night never eating the silver breadcrumbs
the milkweed under that monarch butterfly sun,
the heart not torn,
at least, not permanently from its ruby hinge
in the Kingdom Come, de la mare's dog with the silver paws
and all storms leading, leading ua to Oz.

mary angela douglas 18 february 2022; 18 march 2023