Cinderella's Table Cloth

[for Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Perrault]

(or anyone who ever wondered, where did Cinderella

really get that dress?)

threaded of fine snows, and worked with silver

scrolls, pale apples, faint flowers from one heirloom spring.

tinged in lavender; cast in blue shadows,

casting off, on myriad ships to embroidered isles,

they were never found; glass waters beaded there;

their ghosts embossed in crystallized appliques. a tree,

weeping amethysts: the  web flown wide and nestled

at my nursery door...

or tied with heraldic ribands

flowing at the sill

a day my mother died

or on the wedding banks of Skye;

the fairy pointelle of her rivers or

it is patterned on clouds, was whispered,

gold at precarious edges

inset with the costly moons of kings that set not on

dark empires; bright rose chevrons-

o puzzle pieced, aggrandized, lost

from the table of

The Seige Perilous...

at each corner where the winds

puff out their cheeks, in scarlet.

worn by no bride on earth, it could

have been made over

or for the fair Elaine.

and here am I, thought Cinderella

awash in her hard times

eating beans and franks on pink chinette

and late for work in my own scullery;

rolling up the inglorious sleeves

of my last gingham

in rainbow popping dishwater.

and that's no story.

mary angela douglas 20 june 2014/rev. 24 july 2014