The Islands Off The Lost Coast Of Monet (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to my Grandmother, Lucy W. Young]

in the islands off the lost coast of Monet
I culled the water lily colors
in the water

cupping my hands in music curving back
while in the air of wandering mirrors
this residue of a gold-threaded azure

lifted and fell...

it's the long-expected radiance
you can't explain
emeshed in the fairytales
as they're told

like hidden angels in the picture
you don't see at first
that have to be pointed out to you
before they melt again:
sheer traceries richly borrowed
from all that fondant light.

in a painting by Monet
cream yellow floats
edged in a tanager red...

but I am shimmering and lost
as if in a prelude by Debussy and
somehow in the way

I tripped the rose-tripped light
of a hidden evanescence
holding the white cathedral still
only with my gaze

and I wept with no sound at all
into these plum-ransacked streams
smudging slightly

their taffeta waters purling -
crooning - to each loved thing:
'don't disappear...'

I'm calling your endangered colors home
and willing the unmoored prisms not to break
let silver trumpets sound

your amethyst testaments
by far
the last of their kind-

mary angela douglas 3-5 july 2010