Icarus' Daughters Dream Of Moonlight

(in memory of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, January 1986)

[to my Grandfather, Milton B. Young-
and to my father, Robert R. Douglas-]

if only he had fallen in love with the moon.
I sometimes dream of him that way,
in the winters since.

that cherishing starlight
kept him alive.
but he was a summer dreamer

all in all. a daylit king
bringing us gilded toys back
from the Fairs

or gold wrapped candies
in the atriums where we watched for him
or on the field flowered hills.

oh that we had sprinkled his waxwork wings
with guardian frosts in the long midnights,
the horrid things

but when?
he never slept.

it's so hard looking back.
we'll wear green ribands,
sheens of mint-

paler than oceans' crests, diminishing.
over the wreckage
or pale blue ripples out toward

Arcturus-
playing swing-a-statue on
the attic lawns 

if only to dream till dawn
among ourselves in a code that won't redress:
far far from the choric voices of the sun:

to wish. and wish.
there have been another quest-

another flight than this one

mary angela douglas 30 august 2015