Here Where The Desolate Reminisce About The Beautiful

to Edna St. Vincent Millay, on her immortal poetry

here where the desolate reminisce about the beautiful

how they fled their golden cages too soon

mid sentence, taking with them the sun and the moon

the crisp stars over the savannahs I too have raised

my small flotilla of sighs, my doll sized armies in vain.

what can it avail, this rain of indigo tears

this ink stained blurring

I brushed away early in Spring forgetting all easters

momentarily, the unconsoled among the lilies;

I am perennial.

hearing thunder in the grass and supposing it to be lions

when they pass tangling in tawny conversations

all the carnival devastations

when it is only the wind

I find I find that I'm

unable to resume this time

the jeweled things that we knew

when those who sang us to sleep were still vivid.

leaving us now like petals or leaves

scant evidence of the bloom that was theirs

we try to gather again in our useless hands.

mary angela douglas 15 may 2021