The Small Giraffe Amid The Roses, Floodtide

the small giraffe, (figurine):
dozed amid towering roses-
froze in his spot and yet still wondered

in a delicate way, why would he not?
about the dazzling scale of things.

and how it shifts at times as when
you see the green world through a single raindrop.
perhaps he cried as well

where none could know
there on the mantlepiece
(where his only motion was

when someone came to dust):
for the roses, out of reach.
for the cottagers always at the beach

left him plenty of time to mourn.

or was it the rose blooms, newly watered,
cried for him themselves
because he was

still too little to do that
for himself as well as all the other things.
and they were so condescending

in the air stirred by the ceiling fan.

oh small giraffe amid their seashell pelf and
near the walls painted ocean colours
oh, if you can, please hear

the shoreline echoes sympathetically
to you in all His seas...

and they, will they carry us away he queried
in his never sleeping porcelain language

longing, oh they must

some sunny Saturday should an island
wave curls its last recorded ever

and I'll no longer be here on display
but die, if I may, if china dies
when the wave breaks here.

then I'll be
drifting with the rose pots on the vivid tide.
all this is to say the way he dreamed,

the way he stayed alive

mary angela douglas 20 june 2015;11 march 2016