You In Your White Dresss Crying

you in your white dress crying
will you later appear in a painting by the
Impressionists, a cloud in the poet's

sky will you be transformed
you at the Graduation with your gardenia flare
or pausing for a moment on the stair

your hair braided with the gold
of a vagrant Light.
you will take flight in your white dress

at best from all life's indignities
however you are remembered.
clear to your own fingertips

in that elaborate anguish you possess,
possessed, from the Beginning.
and disappear and disappear

time and again through the grottos
where you have laid your lilies down
in the fitful grasses for one instant only

quicker than lightning how it all passess...

so that only the fictive fragment
remains for the general audience.

mary angela douglas 15 april 2017