Thursday, November 15, 2012

Bluebird

[to Maurice Maeterlinck author of "The Bluebird"]

there is a soul in light you said

and blue birds nestled in the folds of night that you may find.
why then are we still weeping on the shores so near the floods

that took it all away

before we learned to carry it all inside

from kingdom to kingdom,
and always?

In the Land of Memory dear Shades of the long ago

fall away, beseeching, please turn aside down this
folkloric lane, won’t you?

we’ll have bread and cherries

under late summer's trees, or
toasted cheese on a fork

near the winter hearth and bowls

brimful of cream or is it dream in an Alpine spring
and then, dream more...

a history made of lead weighs down on the heart too

imperceptibly so that we do not know we do not hear you
rustling the raspberries.

now they will slam the door on you

as if you were a cheap peddler
if they even see you at all,

stamping with a modern library’s stamp:

"DISCARD".
but I can see the shine of something, still not dead

all made of fantastic speaking twined

from a rubied thread
children leaving home may still find, sometime,

tangling them in the woods again

in golden gazing up or
whenever they spill the sugar for the Tea

imagining they are grown-up now, irretrievably-

they may remember suddenly,
exactly why they came

and, like a flash of something brilliant

in the world they only think they see-
Who sent them

mary angela douglas 3, 10 november 2012