WHO WAS JOHN WHITESIDE'S DAUGHTER

even the bells don't sing her name:
painted in whitewash on cotton clouds

that float away;
the geese she tended scatter distressed by a

crystal shadow, at best;
a girl in watercolour skirts, the grounds.
who is John Whiteside's daughter

can she be found

what is an elegy without a name
or was grief for her as weightless
as the questions at the end of the chapter:

[can you explain? what was The Poet
trying to say,the Poet who signed
his name to the Poem; for sure

the Poet whose name endures]
what is a watercolour in the rain,
what is a watercoloured name

dissolving here in any close reading
when parents christen even children
dead on arrival

and etch it in stone, the christening name-
if not in "marble or the gilded monuments".
she could have been anyone; a tiny doll soldier

in the tomb of an unknown Pharoah.
well you know, how did her mother feel about that?
does anyone know? that's my question.

did she softly cry not wanting to make a scene
what kind of immemorial poem is this
for my little girl...

the angels took it away with them
(I mean, her name)
leaving behind the funeral train, the flowers;

departing with
her light, her apple white hours
where God,at least, Who knew what to call her,

[alone, alone...the bells intone:

fleeting, the goose girl when God
as they say in the South,
called her home

mary angela douglas 10 december 2015;22 june 2022