Will You Come Home Miranda Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

we wrote cloud pieces for the pianoforte

and scooped up lillies and cast them on streams

and floated ourselves there for awhile

and spent our days in the shady nooks

baiting our hooks with gilded words

in tune with ourselves and all the birds

whose languages we surely knew

prescient as we were back then.

now your footfall is no longer certain

on the mist covered road

your voice indecipherable

will you come on home

Miranda, someone from Shakespeare

seems to say

or else that they just aren't going that way

so you trudge on alone.

telling yourself the old, the beautiful lies

near the seas of jade

and under

the lilac foaming skies.

mary angela douglas 16 january 2023