ASHPUTTUL HAS THE LOVELIEST DRESS

[to my mother, Mary Young-Douglas and my grandmother,
Lucy White Young]

Ashputtel has the loveliest dress

made all of stars or tiny spangles
on a peach background;
against an aqua cloud
she leans, or aquamarine-
in my first Storybook.

how can she stop herself from dreaming

in tulle that is aglow with sudden

marigolds?

she's "folding in" a sapphire fan just

like a cake, not wasting anything

humming "La Traviata".

or in a tarlatan whispering

"violets, like the twilight hour"
that she believes in-
while I go on just reading,
lilies in a mist.

and everything she says

is only waiting to be:
a diamond or a
peridot embroidered on the air
in the distance between dream and dream.

it's God knows best

when she's blubbering over the parsnips
snipped too fine-
or snapping the clothespins off the
apricot crochet of clouds

or carnation petticoats-

how her shadow's pale pink silk

is dyed to match
His favorite orchids, orchards, sighs-

oh how could it be

any other way than this
when she glides out in the froth of
plinking moonlight unaccountable
happiness

that I have stored inside

to keep from crying
when the stitching's wrong-
the seed-pearls scattered-
and daybreak errands wounding
on a crooked-not a silver
stair-

she says, "God will take care of you"
and she should know.

before your melting vision soon

how gently she will step into the snows as into blue-belled meadows
holding on

in her glimmering house shoes;
decorative and true-
and spilling stardust as she goes
more beautiful than the mirroring sea
in my jump rope rhymes of green taffeta.

let the jeweled clock weep


the lucent tatters back-
the yellow gold pumpkin
crank itself up the hill
beside the little house with the rick-rack curtains and
the apple tree

let the raggedy rosebush

in the Mama's garden
burst into everlasting rubies
Raphael's cherubs gather still...

mary angela douglas 21 october 2011