The Transfiguration Of The Crayons Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to the child Dylan Thomas refused to mourn and others]

I saw the red orange orange red suns the blue violets
and the violet blues the green turquoise
and the turquoise greens

and the waxy seas, the sea so singular
and it was a dream that they had all melted
like birthday candles left on the cake too long or

molten butterflies on a skyward spree soft blue or
just bend down and you'll scrape your knee
and call it a strawberry

burned down too quickly anyhow
there's wax on the buttercream the buttercream roses
and it seems a mistake but it's not and it comes out right

the infinite sum where you tore a hole through the paper
because you erased it so many times and thought
you would get marked down for being so messy

but the crayons arise and they form an arc and you
pass through though to the other side, the next grade up!
though no one's singing London Bridge, the snowy choirs

or ring of roses or tisket and the tasket of the yellow green
the green yellow and we drink limeade stirred in an April shade
so happy we're irradiated in the sudden glow of the crayon

suns all melting together and in the afterglow

we know this is Heaven
and you can't muss your dress all made of silk here
or spill your milk and now,

three's nothing left to cry over is there on the slate?
however far you look it smells like clover
under a backyard summer simmer shimmer sun

fling glitter out the window backward
while we're riding away
there's so much I have to tell you

in a someday language

mary angela douglas 21 august 2015



















little, little ones...