His Stories Come To Light

[to Hans Christian Andersen]

the fragmentary stories of the blue

across the scudding landscape

come to view

across the light leafed pages of his dreams

and in the rose tints of a dawning stream

of endings and beginnings never gleaned

whence is he? the king in danish castle

wakes to sigh

across the rubied threshold of a mind

obscure, with poverty endowed and spoked

with light beyond the stray, the local cloud

hand painted in such colours, orchid rare

beyond the legends of the schoolrooms where

the floating snows reveal a magic land

apart from any other, on command

when children in the schoolyard lose the stare

of rudimentary knowledge brought to bear

and find instead a sky of glistening there

with kingdoms never after glimpsed again

but told and retold to the sheer, the dear
the wondering

delight of men

mary angela douglas 24 march 2016