The Sendoff To The Pale Blue Galaxy 500 Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I hope that when I die my grandfather comes to pick me up

in his pale blue Galaxy 500 Ford with Grandmother by his side

in her rose taffeta with the velveteen jacket and the rhinestone buttons

Mama in the back seat in her lilac Easter dress is working on poems in

an Eagle tablet with the two dogs, Fearless and Poochum Woochum

Tak a tak a Toochum getting along famously hanging out the window

and my sister just around the bend emerging from Carnegie Hall

in Heaven to massive applause and bouquets thrown from here and there

and huzzahs and hurrahs

and she climbs in too, there's plenty of room even for the bouquets

and we pull up to Hamburger Heaven a roadside stand

across the way as plain as day the Heavenly Arkansas Gazette

where my father has just put the galactic issue to bed in the white night that is Heaven

now the stars being visible in daylight

we are singing Pickin on A Harp with a Golden String

and our harmonies are Grand.

even Grandiloquent.

with Hershey Bars, the silver foil peeled back

in abundance; Wheaties, the Breakfast of Champions.

mary angela douglas 13 july 2021