AS IF THE SUN HAD WORDS

 

(for Piper Laurie- in 'The Grass Harp',

on the tone poems of her vocal inflections, radiant impressions..

it's not made of glass and yet it chimes

like the wind through old roses

in a garden from another time: 

gardenia watered

through angelic rains- 

almost - of china - breakable-

ringed with the fanciful; 

making the twilight hour

stand-  still-

ghost children, think so-

far away, wavering between Shine and shine

in the brocade of the prismed air

and down the bow of the night's proscenium where

the stars seem to have caught her light.

onstage, on the stage of verities, 

simple as a valentine or not-

with scrolled handwriting

you thought you recognized? 

was it a dream? 

inscribed for someone else's life? 

like the debut of flowers in each spring, 

a freshness, with a difference -

a painting painted under the one we're used to; 

the one we're unaccustomed to feeling, long out of view.

not now-

when suddenly the Soul

feels it was stashed in rooms with no other harps

through centuries: 

contriving never to be smashed.

not that contemporary, 

something harkens farther back

than anyone can remember rehearsing then: 

her song, initialed with unaccountable jewels.

jewels on the surface of everything, 

she refracts without even intending to.

and is the world made of crystal, then, 

sighed the children, wondering-

with an occasional orchid flare

going up,  from the otherwhere

and is it Christmas everywhere or

only where we are snowing? 

where can the fountain flow for

such enchantments and can we go there, 

please- and far from the broken things-

drenched in the borealis

up past bedtime-

or, is it, the lost languages of birds or

just her standing in a ray of light

filtering through the green-

about to speak

as if the sun had words

mary angela douglas 7 july 2014