(For Cynthia Ann Dougherty)
Towing your tattered doll,
you would fetch your storybook
and scale my knees to hear
how Sleeping Beauty woke.
My voice, to match a tale,
grated a giant's roar
or whispered of lamp or bean
against your ash-blonde hair.
You clapped each tidy ending,
after fidgeting through the plot:
your smile—at rescue, prince,
embrace—bloomed at the thought.
In that time of once upon,
legend let fall the truth
that a princess is her feeling:
kind words keep a lovely mouth.
I celebrate that now
in your own story's flush,
toss rice at your ivory gown
and raise a father's wish.
Ever-afters recede in mist,
but for the princess shining here
my cheer is plain and easy:
may your storybook endure.
[Pub. in Caduceus, Yale U. Press,2013]
William F Dougherty
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/epithalamium-14/
