With Eyes Deeper Than That

                                                                                              

(revising the story of the shallow princess (Grimm’s fairytale) who dropped her golden plaything down a well, pouted about it, and was rewarded when she flung a frog into a wall)

[to Elizabeth Orton-Jones, children’s author of the lovely book, “Twig”]

…with eyes deeper than that                                                                                        

there’s a princess at the edge

of cooling waters

in my backyard-

looking for just a hint

of something lost and golden.

is it golden only because it’s lost?

or maybe, just partly-clouded

I mean, like a tiny cloud suspended in a pale blue marble

no one can get at.

will the

sky part, revealing a recollected sun

in purely sequined waters

cause diffuse false hope, momentarily…?

so that she dances in cerise dazzlement

on sea-green glass in the alee

and then, is hurt- suddenly…

and filled with common sense?

then this task is never done in daylight.

what will we do?

there’s the princess, stirring the water

with her see-through,jeweled hands, of course, and chiming to herself

“all is not lost”:

a song both lost and golden in the

flattening world I’ve glimpsed on sepia maps…

the ones indicating no treasure, no treasure

at all

that’s me at the window very small

filled with polished apple measures-

and late porridge on a Saturday;

only half-dusting the what-not in my

Grandmother’s living room-

using too much Lemon Pledge in just one spot

I’m so entranced

by the princess kneeling in taffeta sunlight

right by the crabgrass-

in her pale green ermine;

her budding crown.

is it time past  or something close at hand

moving fair and fast

that slipped from slender majesty sometime

as  cream poured from an earlier pitcher

might affect this year’s strawberry tartness?

or, like silk spooling with no sound into

an orchid stillness never found

because she did not turn around

in one instant only-

to catch the Goldeness

and was deemed negligent ever after

among other things-

and by only passing strangers

filled with common sense.

marigold petals sifted by far angels are

drifting now adown this amber

I can’t understand-

but then, I’m caught in it, too;

which is the greater miracle

or pavane?

I will put something shimmering on

from a dance-class closet, thin as lawn.

I will learn the steps and not be banished

running to meet her in the sky’s closing jewels.

I’ll bring her cinnamon buns from breakfast

pineapple-upside-down cake from school

-if I may, and in a light pink paper napkin, folded-

and orange tea-

and then I’ll find that

she is me only slightly faded and

later in the day

in peach-bright slippers and a pomegranate gown…

collecting postcards in sunset sudden hues.

oh may I be found a little golden and not lost,

to peer at last into Infinite waters

with a jeweled periscope my very own and a key under the mat

grown up in a veiled hat like my Grandmother’s

with its single velvet rose

and negligent, negligent in the flattening world

I will stare into the deep and cooling waters, too

some of us call, “music”-

with eyes even deeper than that.

mary angela douglas 12 may 2012