PAVANE OF THE SLEEPING STREAM

[in memory of my Grandmother-
and for Judy Collins]

it's the pavane of the sleeping stream
the sleeping stream that leads I won't know where
fresh out of the gate like Peter in Prokofiev

I hear the white duck's oboe

I hear the white duck's oboe in a vivid spring
and I follow the sleeping stream

and cut blue lavender flowers

and the snowy green from the snowball
bushes of the neighbors

or from the fields between

pale pink pale green pale blue
in clusters near the porches of
the gliding swing

thinking all things are equal

at least among flowers
I am least among flowers

and follow the sleeping stream

the onyx with its one small star
on my grandmother's brother's ring

Herbert, who died young

and lose the pavane never weeping
the crystal beaded sunsets,

like her handbags,

in the distance
I don't even know I'm leaving,

and it's all Rouault in the mists,

the weeping clown, Pagliacci
on glass records going round

in studios of the merry-go-round
and being the vanishing point of rain
from an early age

rain on her watered colours
rain upon my face
I can't see dissolving

when no one says: "you're leaving home"
at the end of the summers

I am the sleeping stream

I am the piano stowed away by strangers.

mary angela douglas 6 may 2014;rev. 17 november 2014