to my mother, Mary Young-Douglas and my grandmother, Lucy White Young
Ashputtel has the loveliest dress
made all of stars or tiny spangles
on a peach background;
against an aqua cloud
she leans, or aquamarine-
in my first Storybook.
how can she stop herself from dreaming
in tulle that is aglow with sudden
marigolds?
she's folding a sapphire fan just
like a cake, not wasting anything
humming 'La Traviata'.
or in a tarlatan whispering
'violets, like the twilight hour'
that she believes in-
while I go on just reading,
lilies in a mist.
and everything she says
is only waiting to be:
A diamond or a
peridot embroidered on the air
in the distance between dream and dream.
it's God knows best
when she's blubbering over the parsnips
snipped too fine-
or snapping the clothespins off the
apricot crochet of clouds
or carnation petticoats-
how her shadow's pale pink silk
is dyed to match
His favorite orchids, orchards, sighs-
oh how could it be
any other way than this
when she glides out in the froth of
plinking moonlight unaccountable
happiness
that I have stored inside
to keep from crying
when the stitching's wrong-
the seed-pearls scattered-
and daybreak errands wounding
on a crooked-not a crystal,
stair-
she says, 'God will take care of you'
and she should know.
before your melting vision soon
how gently she will step into the snows as into blue-belled meadows
holding on
in her glimmering house shoes;
decorative and true-
and spilling stardust as she goes
more beautiful than the mirroring sea
in my jump rope rhymes of green taffeta.
let the jeweled clock weep
the lucent tatters back-
the yellow gold pumpkin
crank itself up the hill
beside the little house with the rick-rack curtains and
the apple tree
let the raggedy rosebush
in the Mama's garden
burst into everlasting rubies
Raphael's cherubs gather still...
mary angela douglas 21 october 2011
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
I loved this great poem in what it contains... Pretty thoughts of Mary Douglas.