She Praises The Kingdom Of Disney

[To Walt Disney]

from the first some children understood you

as a separate country

one which of course should be real though

not the one we went to school in

swinging our plaid metal lunch boxes

our nervous stomachs on the playground.

no.  this one was where the fairy tales

really happened.  and you were the tour guide,

if not the King

(you were too kind for that)

unrolling your blueprints right there on

the screen on Sunday night T.V. and

speaking to us as if we were real

about Tomorrowland your face

lit up like birthday candles.

my Grownups loved you too

and did not laugh

when I dreamed seriously

of going where the life-size tea cups swirled

and seeing it through

all the way to the Sleeping Beauty Castle

dressed in pink and blue assuming

a magisterial role of course of course

this was how it was done in the World

who cares how many orange groves were

ploughed under for this Kingdom.

we will see them again in little orange

stars irrepressibly arcing the capital

of our dreams.

wearing our plastic mouse ears

tuned into the Mickey Mouse Club

we were the inheritors of everything happy.

and knew it should always be this way.

Oh Walt what would you say

to see the rodent sorrows of your

Kingdom now how purity and grace

and all the colours blurred into

so many things you never wanted.

too fast on the carousels whirled snap shut

the archives on your make believe

by those who never wished on a star.

or never seemed to.

after you left the Party

how could it be the same

the cake grew stale; the rowdies

popped each vivid balloon

and yet, there's still a trace of stardust left

.isn't there?

while in Heaven for sure is the real

Disneyland, the Platonic version

in a Midwestern accent katy-cornered from Baum:

the one that cannot be undermined

or underrated by the vicious.

the one we were meant for

green as grass blue as the sky

coon-skinned in the frontier freshness of a dream

the chiming clockworks  of hand-painted schemes

and set to mine the gold of lost Delight

I won't ever be sorry to say

I loved and I was part of.

mary angela douglas 30 november 2013