Dark Green Blackboard

you are the sum
did they write on the dark green blackboard
at the front of the class,

the living poem of all your days and ways.
or was that what you saw in the looking glass:
the sum of what will be, or what has passed? minus

nothing and you win the prize of
bluebirds sung and cracker jacks cracked all
cherry pie pasted down

in your very own scrap book, notebook

spiraled like the sun is
when you dream you are astronomy itself.

did they warn us? on lined paper?
keep your margins and your seams  straight.
or was that how we spelled it all out

to ourselves when we were late,and
made to wait in corners
when they thought that we weren't listening

in the glistening of the year...

I want to start again, I think, in tears,
and try to blink them back
down the block to the phantom yellow bus

to the starched beginnings;
in eyelet petticoats fresh as clouds
and gingham-sashed:

to big block letters in all the right colours
yet to learn! and I won't be found when
they call me out of the twilight saying,

it's already been your turn;
we can see where you are and it's time
for supper anyway.

the rust coloured leaves won't allow it,
will they? just- another- chance to play
in a Keats like gust of wind or is

it Shelley?  I'll remember;
gingerbread, surely,
and the pure sugar snow on the cakes

of Christmas freshly
baked, once more!
and the marble spun and spinning azure

of it when you're out of doors! and raspberry sherbet
at all the parties I have learned by heart

if yon won't tell them
where I am all firefly lit and glittering where
it's growing dark...

mary angela douglas 16 august 2015