Entrancingly Pink, The Peppermint Rag

a drugstore bag of peppermints can set me dreaming:
pink, fleet peppermint ice cream, texture of Heaven;
candy striped stripings of thick red, of vanilla snow

sometimes with a slender, tremulous.

thread of green. I know that it's  tremulous I seem to be
half announcing to no crowds that you can see: oh
there must be a peppermint train to Fairy Land indeed

though the clouds are low; still, sumptuousness melts in pink
at the table of my merry schemes
like berries in cream with a slight glaze of

winters remembered. as of wintergreen, through

snowfalls somewhere else like a vast dessert
we've no spoons for yet; so we'll just sip it through a straw
and call it malted when the incredulous caw from

grammar schools all over that I said the sun is carmelized,
wrapped in golden paper;

that I'm in cahoots with
peppermint in all its phases and I gaze
at the minty moon above the candy castle multiflavoured

when I'm supposed to be
doing my arithmetic before the Christmas Party,

dressed in rose dimity; bright as tinsel can be
and it isn't even my birthday-

mary angela douglas 9 august 2015