Would It Be Summer Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to my sister, near her birthday]

if I could find the colour wheels
you must have stashed in the closet
would it suddenly be summer then?

your Prang watercolours...school
dresses with sashes

the board games, the rains,
the lemonades while we watched
Peter Ibbetson on t.v.

the refrigerator dough cookies
we always burned on the bottom
crispier that way.

if I could find.

one creamy clover
or a purple one
or the tree shade

where we played
in our oceans of time.
the gypsum or the eglantine

the fun filled gemmy pretense at ballet

the flecks of quartz
the history of caves
never knowing their names

and all the guessed at flowers...
our fear of bees.
the poured out honey hours

the memory of
our shadows stretched out
on the sidewalk goblin like or

the bubbles blown and wobbling
in our shared sunshine
opened at Christmas time

with a happy tinge of chill
ellliptical rainbows on the windowsills of dreaming.
the indoors pale pale blue

and the white curtains
drawn like clouds
at evening with its star or two

shielding us in being new.

mary angela douglas 4 august 2015; rev.9 march 2016