Vivid (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[in memory of my grandmother, Lucy White Young ]

these peripheral fairy stories
I still wind
on a reel of gold

even if the pictures are flickering
in this Celluloid mirror
and the glass slipper slips to the stones
and shatters
before it can be found.

I still preserve like
muscadine jam the
soul's gilt gingerbread;
it's peppermint and gemstone gumdrop
gumpdrop crenellations;

all sugar plum, pastel expectations;

a panoramic view at Easter
of violet-trimmed hats
against a primrose sky;
the key to the heart's most

singular libretto, a

treble clef of stars:
music unfolding like this fugue of the far dimensions.
my mother's pensive singing in a green plaid dress:
butter and sugar on enchanted bread,
the faraway Land of Green Ginger,

tomato soup, grilled cheese
fruit cocktail.

ever-closer I gather my anomalies,
secured for a glittering denouement:
twelve fairies with their gifts,
a summer piano's
'Rustle of Spring',

a bird's chilled singing in the holy rain

the spinning wheel unspun
the last sleeve sewn.
the princess clouding capture
with a milky quartz

(tucked into a secret pocket
before the school bell) ;

treading the springtide scriptures of a dream
coping with wrapped enigmas,
her tears of pearl recondite-
like everything else.

prayers with no transliteration, heard
even from such dim towers.

all you know.

mysteriously without the wind
the green tree tops begin to bend;
taken up at the hem

the cherry-glazed day arrives:
the vivid rose ensoleil in the outer snows.

mary angela douglas 18 may 2009; 29 september 2023

*ensoleil: with the sun's rays around it as in heraldic pictures. (Fr.)