THE STRAWBERRY CONE IN THE PICTURE BOOK, TOPPED BY PISTACHIO, TOPPED BY GOLDEN VANILLA

we began early with the ideal
as opposed to real life at school
where sometimes despite the

grownups best efforts
to pin us down in our desks
we would float upwards

children of the space age
with the fairy tale tinge still about us
in our Golden Age.

how to explain these tendencies
without, haha, reverting to psychology.
oh let's not refer to psychology

in this poem or any other.
let's be free
to not return to the subject at hand

observing the members of the band
on the bus after school
with their flutaphones.

I will play upon said flutaphones
remembering the images of ice cream
in various picture books

circa the 1950s
oh, take another look, also at the balloons...
was there ever in real life

ice cream this fluffy, colours this extravagant.
oh welcome child to the inner pageants.
it's eternal ice cream

no matter how it seems otherwise.
no matter how much

you wore out that page
no matter whether the backdrop
is at the zoo near the lion's cage

at the school fair or the county one
where everyone comes for the blue ribbons fluttering
or the cake walks or musical chairs

your eyes are fixed only there even in the comics

with Lulu, on the perfect cone.
there it is again.
in strawberry almost frothing wonder

topped by the pistachio, and then the golden cream
of vanilla or nearby fragrance of the sarsaparilla
I know it tastes better than anything else at the circus,

birthdays notwithstanding
and I bless the illustrator from my heart
and I want to declare in a Whitman like way

in a song of myself
not the elf on the shelf
with Plato stating the ideal forms

this is the form of the ideal
triple decker ice cream cone
imprinted in my soul

let it be emblematic forever
painted always like the Paradiso
in the same creaminess never dripping

never slipping from the cherishing hand

and filled in
in the everlasting colouring books virgorously,
in the neverlands

using our best crayons the best we can

to the heart's delight
in the heaven of heavens.

mary angela douglas 29 december 2019