They Will Steal Your White Weddings Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

they will steal your white weddings,
your enameled stars;
the tickets to the movie

inside your head;
the one with lush landscapes
and a scalded moon.

and though the flute plays lowly,
it's someone else's June now, and sensing this,
the harp will be aggrieved;

the one you tuned with mother of pearl;
the one they seized.
and though the piano pianissimo

is softer than snowfall at the rigged auditions;

then the last whisper of the heart to itself
before unwarranted doom and the lockdown in the final tower,
their stolen goods will appear only

in the gossip columns from noon to hackneyed noon
and in a braying hour with the heavens no longer fooled
by a rhinestone Orion.

while on a God given wind your orange blossomed

days, the sheen of them whisked away on a thieving tide
will descend, becoming more vivid on their return-
o Bride inconsolable! -

than a new spun beginning ever could:
you, standing in a doorway: your arms full of lilacs
and the future.

mary angela douglas 2 july 2016