Among Angels (2 page)

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Prayer

Angel of lost spectacles

and hens' teeth,

angel of snow's breath

and the insomnia

of cats, angel

of snapshots fading

to infinity,

don't drop me—

shoeless,

wingless.

Defender of burrows,

carry me—

carry me

in your pocket of light.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Pistis Sophia: A Dispatch

She took the twisting serpent in hand,

its tail twined around her arm;

pumping mighty wings she flew

along the trails of sky.

The garden was still except for the two

down by the river, naming the reeds.

She dropped the serpent by the apple tree,

then, following celestial orders,

flew back across the infinite blue.

Reports of strife on the back streets

and strikes by cherubim

occupied her long past the Fall.

In the Spring—she heard—

the two were served a sharp, swift eviction.

By then all Heaven was in an uproar,

so what did the Earth matter?

—
JANE YOLEN

The garden was still except for the two/down by the river, naming the reeds.

—
Jane Yolen

Angel among the Herbs

Angelica archangelica
,

herb of the archangel Michael

on whose feast day you bloom,

you are not beautiful.

It is said that a monk

fell asleep and saw you,

tall, gawky,

singular as celery,

peering over the rose's shoulder,

the lily's cradle,

and woke singing

your praises.

You strengthen the heart,

unbind the lungs,

untrouble the stomach,

blow out bad spirits.

Let the juice of angelica

fall on deaf ears.

They will hear

the heartbeats of angels

and the dead coming back

in your roots

calling our names

in your green tongue.

—
NANCY WILLARD

An Angel Considers the Naming of Meat

Whatever this was, with its arms and skirt,

crowned and winged and all-seeing,

it was no mere grazer.
Crown roast
,

butterfly chop, arm pot roast, skirt steak
,

eye round
. And what's left

is large and curious as a fallen tree,

split open, a breached tomb of roseate marble.

Seven ribs stand up in a sea of fat.

Like rowers they lean into the wind.

Once they rocked as one, in out, in out,

pushed by the breath of the living beast.

Now there is stillness

on the butcher's board, faintly hollowed

by the flesh of animals fallen under the knife

year after year. How can he bear it?

On his fluted rack hang hooks, poles,

a scraper for scrubbing the rough nap

off flesh ripped by the blade,

and a cleaver nipped from a halo of steel.

The electric slicer buzzes and whines,

but the plucked pullets sleep, curled up

in their chilly incubator,

their wings hugging their sides,

dreamless, having lost their heads.

If they had thumbs, they would be sucking them.

Famished, foolish, I am overcome with grief.

The butcher unhooks a sausage, cuts it,

hands me a wafer studded with precious meats.

“You're my first customer. This one's on me.”

—
NANCY WILLARD

Every visible thing in this world is put under the charge of an angel.

—
St. Augustine

Every Visible Thing

Asparagus I can believe,

in its first green thrust;

McIntosh apples, tart on the bough;

cardinals like a blot on winter's clean page;

raging crows on cropped fields.

Inching caterpillars I can believe,

fuzzy footed on a leafy spine;

trout rising at dusk,

shedding watered light;

willows weighted over with ice;

even the black snake winding

through the startled grass.

But what angel, totting eternities of

poison ivy,

snail darters,

brussels sprouts,

could have time or will for exaltations?

—
JANE YOLEN

Angels in Winter

Mercy is whiter than laundry,

great baskets of it, piled like snowmen.

In the cellar I fold and sort and watch

through a squint in the dirty window

the plain bright snow.

Unlike the earth, snow is neuter.

Unlike the moon, it stays.

It falls, not from grace, but a silence

which nourishes crystals.

My son catches them on his tongue.

Whatever I try to hold perishes.

My son and I lie down in white pastures

of snow and flap like the last survivors

of a species that couldn't adapt to the air.

Jumping free, we look back at

angels, blurred fossils of majesty and justice

from the time when a ladder of angels

joined the house of the snow

to the houses of those whom it covered

with a dangerous blanket or a healing sleep.

As I lift my body from the angel's,

I remember the mad preacher of Indiana

who chose for the site of his kingdom

the footprint of an angel and named the place

New Harmony. Nothing of it survives.

The angels do not look back

to see how their passing changes the earth,

the way I do, watching the snow,

and the waffles our boots print on its unleavened face,

and the nervous alphabet of the pheasant's feet,

and the five-petaled footprint of the cat,

and the shape of snowshoes, white and expensive as tennis,

and the deep ribbons tied and untied by sleds.

I remember the millions who left the earth;

it holds no trace of them

as it holds of us, tracking through snow,

so tame and defenseless

even the air could kill us.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Angel in Summer: West Virginia

Forgiveness is water over stone,

twenty-one rocks till it is pure.

In my husband's home county

a river falls past strip mines,

over humpbacked boulders,

then is clear enough for trout.

I have eaten those rainbows,

small bones removed,

silver scales browned in butter,

startled eyes popped out.

Each time I ask forgiveness.

We are not afraid of the mountains,

riddled with rattlers.

An angel guides us through the passes,

along the switchbacks.

He looks like my dead father-in-law,

like a Viennese undertaker,

round-faced, small mustache.

He leaves no tracks.

While we fish the pools

he sits, melancholic on the shore;

there is no joy of heaven on his face,

his death too recent for absolution.

He smiles once, sadly, at a strike.

Each cast is a prayer.

—
JANE YOLEN

The Mission of the Puffball

Unlike my brain, it was smooth

and white as that dead foam

they pack around porcelain

shipped from far ports.

Fat angel,

pocked like a wiffleball;

a racquet could send it spinning

into the trees,

but I did not harm it

because I never met

a guest so content

as that sly loaf rising

under the dark leaves

of the hosta,

ripening like cheese,

drawing from darkness

the alien moon of its flesh.

Ferns packing up for the winter

willingly left their shadows

with an angel sent to bare

God's inscrutable light:

in the name of the snow

and my white bowl of darkness
,

do as the air tells you
.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Names

The cherubs at the manger

have no names.

Anonymous,

they hang from the rafters,

singing out only

God's own.

I will call this one

Hosannah,

and that one

Hark,

and the little one

by the window,

wings ruffling

in the winter wind,

I shall call

Collie,

for, like a dog

rounding up sheep,

it was he chevied

poor shepherds on the hill,

driving them down

through narrowing streets

into the waiting fold.

—
JANE YOLEN

A Carol for the Shepherds

An angel woke three shepherds

with timbrel, harp, and drum.

“The morning stars are singing,

the planets dance and hum.

So take yourselves to Bethlehem.

The Prince of Peace has come.”

The sheep scattered behind them.

The crags were dark and wide.

“The wolves will surely find them.

We will not leave their side

for all the babes in Bethlehem,”

the frightened shepherds cried.

The angel sang, “O Morning Bright”

and from his sleeve let fall

a hundred stars, and by their light

the frightened shepherds saw

the wolf that watched their flocks by night

was caring for them all.

“Tonight the rivers sing for joy,

the very stones have tongues,

the lion and the lamb lie down,

the moon marries the sun.

So take yourselves to Bethlehem.

The Prince of Peace has come.”

—
NANCY WILLARD

An Angel Tells the Birds to Gather for the Great Supper of God

Robins and meadowlarks,

and the horned owls, who tune

their talons to the dark;

herons and doves and loons;

birds molting like the moon,

who turns her speckled face

on fields of empty space;

blackbirds whose polished wings

God nicked with holy fire;

and birds with names not heard

on any singer's mouth—

fly to the feast,

from north and south,

from west and east.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Dancing with Angels

I am flat-footed, left-footed,

my heel narrower than my toes.

Slippery surfaces defeat me.

When I was younger

my
port de bras
carried me

through the lower grades.

Mr. B. smiled on me,

so like a god.

I danced with angels,

their wild wings in fourth position,

our toe shoes
slip-slip-slapping

on the heads of pins.

—
JANE YOLEN

Aunt Fanny

They were introduced, Mother said,

by a holy angel,

so what she was wearing a
shmata

on her gray hair,

three black hairs protruding

from her chin.

She sucked lemons at night,

the room smelling like air freshener,

and she snored, a regular little engine.

Her shoes were always broken-down—

bunions, Mother said.

She made applesauce the old way,

from sour apples, could curl your tongue up.

At weddings she danced by herself,

all in a circle, clockwise;

at funerals she wept holding

the hands of other mourners.

She made a
shidekh
, it stuck, though,

so all the rest was forgiven.

Matchmakers are allowed

their little peculiarities,

like angels their wings, their halos.

—
JANE YOLEN

Harpo and the Angel

The manager gave me a harp

who cried on my shoulder,

the left one, as I hunted and picked,

pondered and plucked.

She wanted to be a tree again,

to sing in a thousand tongues,

leaves tilting in the wind.

Now in the dark theater

she went speechless with grief

and showed me the syntax of silence,

its flowers and perfumes,

its chasms of light.

I was her silent brother,

even on Broadway. After one year

I could play “Annie Laurie.”

When the crowd cried
encore

I played it again.

Halfway home, I lost myself

in the crammed windows

of F. W. Woolworth and his

framed pictures, so cheap

even I could afford

the Grand Canyon,

a clipper at full sail,

my own face in the glass,

everything washed in heavenly light,

and nothing with a right to it, except

an angel in the middle,

as comfortable on her cloud

as if she were waiting for the bus

and to make the time go faster

playing her harp, which she leaned

against her right shoulder,

showing me how to hold my harp,