To Tulip Beds In All The Paintbox Colours (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to tulip beds in all the paintbox colours
we wanted to travel
as though the world were

storybook contoured
page by splendid page
for us who knew no age
and so we read.

and breathed in golden apples
fireworks flocking over the castles,
the orange blossomed things they said

by indefatigable fountains.
and hardly dared breathe out
because of beauty, clouding there

and all mapped out beside the
king's pear trees or we were revelers ever
of imprinted Christmas never

going away and side-by-side

our childhood's shelves displayed
the summer round-de-lays
the princess in her towers

the mystic hours, chiming we knew not how
faint music of all we felt before
yet could not name

left to our own rose
see-saw bright devices
the wind-up, toylike scheme.

oh roundelay rose or roundelay Noel!
when we stayed Home from school a little unwell
outside though thunder snows arose

mere History stirred
and barely gleamed.
while we saw dragons in the steam
above the buttered lakes of oatmeal.

mary angela douglas 7 march 2015; 29 november 2023