Ashputtel Has The Loveliest Dress Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

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