Still Life With Finger Bowl And Flowers

paper flowers on a saucered sea

so sacrosanct to me-

I watch you furling your small sails

it's hard for you, being paper

to bloom there in my grandmother's

crystal finger bowl.

a little daring, even, impossible, but anyway,

you do, corollas of the party favors,
leftovers from the festivities.

I am paper too.

I know

having lived in this somehow

for so long or in cardboard imaginary play houses

painted with tempara shutters, doors

opening onto the storybooked

I have become paper thoroughly

I understand

this paradox paradisical

of floating as if somehow real

budding miraculously

precariously on the surface of what

too easily

could dissolve us

mary angela douglas 2 october 2013;25 november 2014;
rev. 21 february 2015