​Watching the reports of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral today, I recalled my early admiration of her, expressed in this poem from my chapbook, Transported.
 
Parallel Lines
Tales of moats and castles frame
my picture of a king.  The Queen
is a prim lady in a trim suit, matching hat.
Alice’s nemesis is dwarfed
by the real, living Elizabeth,
her patient smile akin to my mother’s,
her age-mate, name-sharer. A child,
I hold these two in equal honor.
My mongrel American family
choosing its tradition, links “English”
and “proper,” visits the Cotswolds,
Cambridge, and Windsor Castle,
where neither the Queen nor I can play
with the regal, cased-in-plastic doll house
made for her grandmother, Mary.
 

The RavensPerch has published three of my poems this week.  You can find the first, “Over the Dam” at https://theravensperch.com/over-the-dam-by-ellen-roberts-young/  Does anyone else remember singing as a child, “Swim, said the mama fishie, swim if you can”?  I don’t recall what brought that old song to mind, but it evolved into this little poem.
 
Then click on Next to see my others.  Extended family will recognize the locale of “Formation.”  The poem began at the cottage I visit each year in June—not this year or last, but the year before.  Some of my poems take a long time to reach their proper form.
 
The third poem, “Evening” is one that began last year in a poetry webinar with Marj Hahne. “What are you feeling now?” she asked.  “What color is it?”   Beige is a color I think of as neutral, but as the poem developed it came to represent something definitely on the down side.  Perhaps one could say that “blah” became “the blahs.”
 
The RavensPerch is not the easiest site to browse in, at least for me, but the curious reader will find quite a variety of interesting material in the current batch.  They publish a set of works twice a month. They invite readers to leave comments.

 Two poems, not in my latest chapbook, but related in being about my relations - my parents - have been published on One Art.  Not everything there was to say fit into one short book.   I'm sure I have more to discover about my own history.
​https://oneartpoetry.com/2021/02/26/two-poems-by-ellen-roberts-young/

My unicorns are out in the world.  That is, my book about the unicorn tapestries is out.  The cover gives you an idea of those tapestries but it is only one. There are two sets of tapestries, a green set at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and a rose colored set in the Musee du Moyen Age in Paris.  To see what they look like, go to:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/467638
and
https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/collection/oeuvre/la-dame-a-la-licorne.html
​See what you think.  Then read my book to see what I saw in them.

My two new books are on a collision course.  Transported is delayed.  Lost in the Greenwood is ready to go, but waiting for publication of five poems in Sand Canyon Review.  The poems were unpublished when they were accepted, and I would like the journal publication to be the "announcement."