BLUEBIRD

 

to Maurice Maeterlinck author of The Bluebird

there is a soul in light you said

and blue birds nestled in the folds of night

that you may find.

why then are we still weeping on the shores so

near the floods

that took it all away

before we learned to carry it all inside from

kingdom to kingdom, 

and always? 

In the Land of Memory dear

Shades of the long ago

fall away, beseeching, please turn aside

down this

folkloric lane, won't you? 

we'll have bread and cherries 

under late summer trees, or

toasted cheese on a fork

near the winter hearth and bowls

brimful of cream or is it dream in an Alpine

spring

and then, dream more, , , 

a history made of lead weighs down on the

heart too

imperceptibly so that we do not know we do not

hear you

rustling the raspberries.

now they will slam the door on you

as if you were a cheap peddler

if they even see you at all, 

stamping with a modern library's stamp: 

"DISCARD".

But I can see the shine of

something still not dead

all made of fantastic speaking twined

from a rubied thread

children leaving home may still find,

sometime, 

in the woods again

in golden gazing up or

whenever they spill the sugar for the Tea

imagining they are grown-up now,

irretrievably-

they may remember suddenly, 

exactly why they came

and, like a flash of something brilliant

in the wood a cardinal red

on which the visionary is fed

Who sent them

mary angela douglas 3,10 november 2012;2 july 2022