Oh, How Have The Coloured Birds Flown From The Palace Of Night

[to Georgette LeBlanc]

[commemorating a scene from the children's library where a little girl read, all on her own, an outsize version of "The Children's Blue Bird"...]

oh how have the coloured birds flown from the

Palace of Night, leaving only their indigo shadows.

and will the children linger long on the palace steps,

will this be allowed?

turning also into blue dusk...

into blue dust.

we held in our hands the story

as though it were made of sapphires.

and ours was the freedom, only given once,

to stare and stare at the page without turning it,

alive in the lithograph as though we were the ones

drawn there by an Unseen hand

and lovely still.

and in the stillness, almost home.

now I cannot turn back and look at all we left

did Mytyl say, suddenly crying.

or did the shadows only sing to them that

the sun will rise, but not disclose

whatever it was that

vanished into purple, long ago?

mary angela douglas 4 june 2014