Pavane Of The Sleeping Stream

[in memory of my Grandmother-

and for Judy Collins]

it's the pavane of the sleeping stream

the sleeping stream that leads I won't know where

fresh out of the gate like Peter in Prokofiev

I hear the white duck's oboe

I hear the white duck's oboe in a vivid spring

and I follow the sleeping stream

and cut blue lavender flowers

and the snowy green from the snowball

bushes of the neighbors

or from the fields between

pale pink pale green pale blue
in clusters near the porches of
the gliding swings

thinking all things are equal

at least among flowers

I am least among flowers

and follow the sleeping stream

the onyx with its one small star
on my grandmother's brother's ring

and lose the pavane never weeping

the crystal beaded sunsets,

like her handbags,

in the distance
I don't even know I'm leaving,

and it's all Rouault in the mists,

the weeping clown, Pagliacci

on glass records going round

in studios of the merry-go-round
 and being the vanishing point of rain

from an early age

rain on her watered colours

rain upon my face

I can't see dissolving

when no one says: "you're leaving home"
at the end of the summers

I am the sleeping stream

I am the piano stowed away by strangers.

mary angela douglas 6 may 2014;rev. 17 november 2014