I CERTAINLY CAN IMAGINE BLUE BLAZING LIGHT

(for Ray Bradbury on his 100th birthday)

I certainly can imagine blue blazing light short circuiting out of his fingers at the typewriter
and Sistine instances, paragraphs of gold so that the sun on hold ready to make its next scheduled appearance fumes behind clouds

who is this Bradbury, anyhow bumbling among the blackberries
denizen of summer self crowned King, American Orpheus
and in the end casting green shadows into his ravines

our sanguine hero departs and breaks his heart on the stars for us

so that everything green apple delicious

is peremptorily won over so that they are now best buds.
the sun and ray, ray of the sun
coveting all summers forever so that what is told is vintage


even before old age with its fantastical fantastic ear trumpet
still held out for the gramaphonic rains ceaselessly silver or

melon ripe thumped oh stories you have

become forever the pink and green slices picnic dribbled or
winged from his dovecote and arcing rainbows altering
this river of dreams so that we can no longer distinguish

the streams from the seas the earth from the sky
or the allegiance we pledge torn in half because we cannot decide
which we love more

while we stand children on the banks of it astonishment's own

at this prodigious imagination flowering past us zone past hyacinth zone
and radioed in:
crackling dont just stand there, DO something

and we think to ourselves there is a tangle of berries
long forgotten let us tarry there and in the raspberry thickets
lay aside the selves we thought we were and old despairs and take

and take on the colours of everything chameleon bright

or the armor of light lit up like a thousand stained glass windows on Mars
all that you think or are or could be if you tried
maiden and dragon transposed or it's suddenly snowing

chaplets of the stars and me with my one ruby candle, candlestick reading him
calliope proud and whispered aloud to a chimeless midnight

or in the baked bread of the day we pose I and my soul
ribboned rosed and beaded flummery on flummery and slipping past us he goes
into our own parades so that we feel he's still with us, mist! and then it fades.

missing him, all we need do weeping mirages. adagios
is turn the next page his children of rust clutching our amulets
and we are on it in the zenith of the zinnias at autumn's cusp.

mary anela douglas 7 april 2020