["...and it was summer, beautiful summer"
-Hans Christian Andersen's last, perfect sentence of
The Snow Queen]
on her wintry planet, at the close of day,
the snow queen counts her silver
and her stores of haze.
and this is confusion, put to good use
she says, as she does always
when prisoners are numb and sway
in the mirrors as if they were free.
she smiles; and glaciers grow greener
in the seas and more distracting;
she hunts sorrows
with the polar bears, at ease
and stocks her quivers of snarled,
snatched colors from the Northern Lights
above the suddenly bleak rooftops.
indoors, the tea forgets to boil...
flowering with the frosts
and almost, peerless;
off-the-shoulder accomplished
dream her mirrors,
or only seem to;.
collapsing the sunsets
in her eyes,
the linen of uprooted skies.
who is the queen of snow blindness
almost, she sings.
regal, from certain distances.
and the white bees sting.
but somewhere in a summer
she has forgotten to freeze,
a child weeps into the roses underground
and murmurs, Kay, Kay...
where are you to be found?
and the Maze is raveling.
and the little stars undone.
mary angela douglas 20 june 2014
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