Saturday, January 12, 2019

Different Than We Were Before

(to my Grandmother Lucy W. Young
and my very musical sister, Sharon...
and to Gramp, the best Gramp, Milton B.("Mutt" Young)

we may have planned to connect the dots in workbooks
or in purple mimeograph watching them become
flowers, leaves, constellations the dolls never heard of

this would be additional work but we were happy to do it
knowing it must lead us somewhere different
than we were before

outward from the penciled labyrinths
the simple crosswords, riddles just for fun
spelled out in languid Saturdays after chores were done

and mystical movies,that Hershey Bar
popcorn freedom,
trifling with sets and subsets off and on

clearly without the nets of the lady in strawberry pink
circus tutus using the sun
as a reference point, the northward moss on trees

calculating these: parabola, parasol, what you please by
sunset, moonrise gifts of the numbers, One in gold

meaning prime but we're in the after time
of school where the sundial rules the shade
with the metronome at home

and music runs on in the piano studio
twirling the stool
because Grandmother's pupils are diligent

and love their Mendelssohn.

counting the threads on the vivid spools
we occupy ourselves with her sewing basket
the tiny gold thimble tisket or tasket,

and we are the thieves of the golden eggs she says
when she is vexed 
scolding us through fairy tales so that beauty

is never a wasted opportunity nor

the stairs from note to note she taught us
that we will use long after she's gone
when they have wounded our once upons

hearing that music still, not missing
the northward moss on trees

on and on
connecting the dots from star to star
and not that far from it now:

from finishing off the last spinning wheel
in the last castle
thereby saving the Princess,

the Kingdom of whole notes replete with
beauty cascading everywhere
through the grace notes too

a few of them sostenuto,
sustaining
the worlds we knew then

that still are new and

back to back and sidewalk crack to crack
with the narrow passage through
rose garden to Rose Garden.

when we're through
we'll bring her back the best bouquet
the intricate piece done well and

marked with a golden star, the memory
of who we are at the core Whose Music is
leaving us, somewhere different

fording the rivers of dream-
than we were before.

mary angela douglas 12 january 2019;rev. 13 january 2019