Sunday, December 27, 2015

Scenes From The Brontes' Childhood Not In Any Particular Order

we will build strange towers glimmering
after great ice storms; rainbow haloes
shimmering above unearthly seas,

startling the angelic,
the brigades of Light;
from a Christmas soldiers' set beginning,

our forays
on any present brought from far away
on market days;

foment our playroom skirmishes!
Wellington! Napoleon!

in tiny handwriting we will encode
while the sleeted winds blow,
a doll like history and the myth will

overflow like bread with too much

yeast in it; overflow the pan
of who are you children and
where do you demand too much of life, of art

and how can you parsonage ladies
understand they howl from the vanities;
did someone

else write this? did you have help? but for now...

the sniffiness of harridans in town
never offering us honey on our bread
in any wilderness ahead,

early griefs will not elude us;

the wind on the moor will splinter
us..the unbearable shift of the story until it..
will take away, one by one,

our dears...to take their
degrees in haunting the Far Country or
rearranging the Sameness

until it becomes unalterably the Different,
the Diffident,.
beyond recognition. oh, not in context

our renascence now.

[this was later when letters were opened
and senders sent to a Far Country
for now the summer sparkles on their lea...]

greatness comes in small batches
says Emily with her kitchen apron on.
Charlotte stares in wonder

walking away from so many tombs;
prescient in the morning gloom
broke open into geodes of

fantastical fire

mary angela douglas 26 december, 2015; revised 26 february 2016

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