I Could Not Tell You

what can we build with our small hands
I asked the dolls at my command
of this architecture of sighs

we had accumulated by and by
or would along with all the other toys
but they with their outstretched arms

could not answer me
so that I dreamed it all for them
seeing the Snow Queen glide outside

our bartered windows
and the puzzle still unsolved.
it is love now or then as we remembered it

and now it laps the room and stills the whispering
inside of us, of doom and home in vines no longer
accessible.

apple trees in their time with their exorbitant shade
I made for us again the requisite swing that
floated us as clouds, as extra clouds on a movie scene

or we are painted over a thin transluscent shade of time
in many layers, compressed and that we could unfold
as paper snowflakes cut of old, or chains of valentines

in the paper doll folds remaindered
this we tried to do
one time.

truly  I could not tell you-
When.

mary angela douglas 24 august 2019