Note From Home, Years Later, In Reply To A Note From School

[to my mother and my grandmother,  for perfect understanding]

we were the ones who look for faery gold

for the sheen on the petals that’s scarcely there

but breathtaking when you find it.

there is the maiden on her way

to draw bright waters from the springs,

glad to be out of the house for a day,

(though gladder, still, within it)

on a summer’s day with a breeze-

with the lilting trees leafing over

a something lovelier, greener,

than any green you may have seen

over a lifetime’s cawing, dissatisfied-

with an enchantment that won’t wear thin for you…

there is the maiden returning home

with pailfuls of stars and rich with berries

and kept inside and home from school

well past these many

Septembers scudding violets through

the lavish clouds-upon-clouds:

so that no one in the unanimous classrooms’ ever-after

or on the job, red-pencil ready-

slamming the tea-kettle down a little too hard on the trivet-

could be offended again or call to complain  

the sweet next day and the next, even sweeter

about the faery symphonies pouring

heedlessly, heart-first-

indelible beauty from our blind windows…

then, caught in a may basket, excitedly pinned with Grandmother’s

pearly hat pins (only two of them, Grandmother)  and

pinkly offered up last Monday for Show-and-Tell…

and the exquisite secret my mother kept for me

my whole life long that I learned from that given hour

not yet to tell

(translated for this latter-day song),

I fold and fling to you now-

adown!  a paper airplane current’s turquoise

so that you may have it, too, a little tardily:

speak in diamonds, never toads

speak in diamonds, never toads

speak.

in diamonds. so that God may hear you…

mary angela douglas 6 august 2012