True Reading Is First Reading

true reading is first reading;

lullaby gold

you've lost more than you know

once on a Saturday with Aladdin 

jewel like in the shining cave the soul wandered.

and now it's graded

grade to grade

suspected.  even followed.

evaluated.

can you remember chanticleer clear

the princess in the picture book

roseleafed in the rose that was her

home?

the true test of the knights on the glass mountain.

how you turned the page with no one making you?

no blackboard demonstration, QED.

no diagramming even in coloured chalks

what the heart already knows.

from birth: the Light flows, the baby laughs.

apple green reading.  crunchy

in the attic, red delicious on

a snow day snowing words

fresh as evergreens, sweet peppermints

not required!

not core!

no book reports, just books galore.

the report of midsummer horns

in the Faeryland inside your head

and no critics to get in the way.

you and you alone opening

the antique casements

you could open on the seafoam green foam

where it's you that sees

with no interpreter

the ghost ships foundering there forever

on the reefs when you dream: only in coral.

then soldiers drilled in the counterpane hills

and were never wounded.

and you were not assessed

who owned the Palace where the books were stored,

ridiculous cried the Prince.  Off with their heads.

they stormed no battlements then;

oh beyond meed and free as the air and Blessed

what higher Degree ah wanderer over opulent seas

could anyone else ever give you, anywhere

mary angela douglas 4 december 2013