That Old Riddle Time

whose riddles are these

I ask of Time:

you with your old school doorbell chime

you with your grade school tambourine,

your fairy tale costumes, your gumball machines.

the longer I stay here the more I sing:

it stretches out like a ragbag shadow

and springs back coiled 

surprised it can still behave like a rubber band

the green or the red ones around the Sunday paper

we saved in the kitchen drawer...

and if I think about this enough

I will begin to sup again on vanilla wafers 

till I hear the thud against the welcome rubber mat 

of the rival paper rolled flat as flat

will that take me back to gingham dresses too

just remembering the milk bottles cold, pale blue

on a doorstep set but where was that

or were there posies on a velvet hat

thunder clap! baby cap

a message on a scrap

of the King's best parchment

unscrolled so that the fairy tale Time

decrees the order of the day and all the villagers yelled hooray!

and when someone went away it felt like 300 years

what is it that we cannot comprehend despite our let's pretend

or clouded in tears or running the sap of dreams

and did we take sugar with our cream

so that we want to think we could sink back queasily again

as into a Christmas night pillow

under the snows, blossoming back to bud reversing everything

we are so convinced if we just found the fence

we could be at the beginning of gardens again

in just a twinkle of a persimmon star

a starched out wrinkle

a candy jar

but it's all mystery not a pocket watch to wind

not the railroad kind.

with the golden chain, and delicate engraving;

the refrain in the folk song

that keeps coming back like a wave

to the time of cherries and their stones

the pine branch scraping against our home.

and oh my trees, the feeling we would always be with you

not deserting you like a breeze.

sweetly, unconsciously

with all there was to tell

not forgetting to say: farewell.

mary angela douglas 3 january 2022;29 january 2022