Treasure Hunt

there are many things still left to find
on this belated treasure hunt:
the charms in the cracker jack box

the cereal prizes
and the giftwrapped aisles
where we sighed in toyshops

just before birthdays.
or looking at new catalogues
thick with wonder and glossy array

before Christmas, Christmas Day!

or the book of dancing school patterns
my Grandmother commissioned in the Spring for
someone else to sew in exchange

for a daughter's piano lessons:
Chopin for chiffons beaded radiantly by
a neighborhood's exquisite seamstress.

what shall we make today we
wondered in our paperdoll play.
will we cut out her dresses from the snows?

and will she whirl till midnight?
oh make a flower print dress and colour
it with lemon and with rose for afternoons.

a dress with princess seams,
pure turquoise green?

and this in a shoebox, shadowbox of dreams;
an empire kept and stowed,
swept clean on Saturdays.

but where, old living room
with the beige rose embroidered
sofa did you go?

strewn with Christmas tissued ruses;
or you, brown armchair in vanilla lamplight?
where I

mused long and late toward the last of school vacations;
where the light fell in alternating pools
of the entire jeweled spectrum:

the colur wheel shining on the silver tree.
I'll remember this as Heaven
why couldn't I think then

instead of later on,
when everyone was gone?
because...

it seemed, already, with the Christmas
spelling it so, an Eternity
replete with snows

that could not vanish...
where we would gladly, always live.
forgive me that I couldn't think otherwise

and so, in the end, forgot goodbyes!
I whisper now,
to my invisible friends...

mary angela douglas 17 february 2016