Among Angels (3 page)

knowing what I needed to know,

and giving me private lessons.

—
NANCY WILLARD

An Inconvenience of Wings

In my book of prayers I studied

the picture of Saint Peter, leather apron,

keys at his belt, waking the souls

in their heavenly orphanage.

On the nightstand by each bed

gleams a blue pitcher,

a white cup, and candlestick.

It is clean there.

Six souls share the ewer and basin,

soap and towel. Between their cots

twelve slippers nap side by side

like cats on the cloud floor.

It is cold there. The souls curl

under their quilts, wings hugging

their backs. How terrible for them

when a foot tingles,

a wing turns pins and needles.

“Growing pains,” my mother said

when leg cramps staggered me from bed.

“Stand up. Put your weight on it.”

—
NANCY WILLARD

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

—
G. K. Chesterton

Angels Fly

Angels fly

because

they take themselves

lightly between the thumb

and forefinger,

and lift themselves

above the casual world.

Angels fly

because

they take themselves

lightly as flour on a board,

rising in yeasty splendor

into the bowl of the sky.

Angels fly

because

they take themselves

lightly as sun

on dark water,

breaking into motes

that float along the tumbling stream.

Angels fly

because

they take themselves

lightly above

the gravity

of any situation.

Angels fly

because

they take themselves

lightly.

—
JANE YOLEN

The Winged Ones

No birthday gift whiter or stranger

than this large pair of wings

my son bought on Amsterdam Avenue.

Pressed from celluloid, thick

as a toenail; two basins

that crease the morning light

in deeply stamped feathers.

A fossil from heaven. The tag

warns: “Not intended for flight.”

“One size fits all,” you assure me

and unfold the intricate harness

and buckle the wings to my body

that never sprang from a sill

or plotted the air through a thicket

or turned on the lathe of a wind

that could snuff out the breath in me

and toss me out of my garden.

There's no finer sight in summer

than yourself wearing them,

making the rounds in Eden,

inspecting the spotted throat

of the lily, the fern's plumage,

stepping behind your girl

quiet as mint on the move

in the woods where the owl lives

and hugging her where the gate was,

angel who forgives.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Metamorph

I have given away my wings;

a feather on the mantle reminds me;

each bird song recalls that transformation.

My shoulders, like a mother's memory book,

hold aches as painful as old photographs.

Nothing, nothing is truly given away.

When Lucifer streaked across

God's clean sky,

we did not see the writing on it

for a thousand thousand

light-stained years.

—
JANE YOLEN

Angel Feather

Here is the quill,

Here the vane,

A hymnal of ivory,

A canticle of bone.

We rise with the light,

Benedicte
to the dawn,

Dive arrow-slim into the East

And with a prayer—

gone.

—
JANE YOLEN

Angel in a Window

Night has fallen in Gethsemane so fast

it bruises the lilies of the field.

Over the altar, the angel

in tailored moss and russet wings

still hovers above the acolyte

who touches his wand to the tapers

and wakes them for vespers.

With their brass collars turned,

two flames bow to each other.

In the dark suburbs

to the right of the altar

prayer candles flicker among themselves

like deaf children in the park

after supper, waiting

for the big lights to wake

over the empty field.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Lucifer

Turning and turning,

He falls fair

Into the morning,

Below God's laughter;

Feathers like fingers

Clutching the air,

Dragging and dragging

Fell night after.

—
JANE YOLEN

Easter Sermon

Do not mention angels
, I am warned.

Unitarians do not believe
.

My talk, therefore, is of a feral child,

mute in its wild agonies,

given no tongue by God

but the raven's,

the nightjar's,

the spotted snake's,

the wolf's.

Overhead a fan, like angel wings,

beats out a different tale.

The children gaze upward;

the adults stare down at their feet.

Afterward, each confession whispers into my ear:

“I believe in angels.”

“I believe.”

Someone flies heavenward from church,

laughter floating down like feathers,

like sermons from the sky,

I believe.

—
JANE YOLEN

Harahel Writes on the Head of a Pin

Hunched by the candle,

wings humped behind,

the angel of archives

scribbles his prayers.

Shema Yisroel

one hundred thousand times;

the tiny consonants

lumining his face,

his chin so bearded

with the light,

passing cherubim

mistake him for

God.

It is always thus

with writers.

—
JANE YOLEN

Gabriel Returns from the Annunciation

Notice the wings of the angel

streaming from his body as he crosses

the open palms of the water.

When the ocean shows him

her many little knives,

his wings tremble and fray,

and the salt diamonds them.

They open like valves of light.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Angelic Script

In the year 1327,

no longer happy with buttressed Gothic,

angels developed their own script.

Teiazel, tired of men of letters,

created two fonts:

Celeste and Malachim:

from
aleph
to
taw

the serifs soared like comet heads

on the stands of each stroke.

You do not believe me?

It is so written

in the
Dictionary of Angels
,

and such volumes do not repeat lies.

—
JANE YOLEN

The Founding of Saint Andrews

Brother Regulus awoke,

the light in his cell like dawn.

An angel squatted in it,

robe hitched up to his heavenly knees.

“Regulus,” the angel said

in a voice so like fire,

one of his glorious eyebrows

was slightly singed with smoke.

“Bring the tooth. Kneecap, too.

Don't forget the upper armbone,

three fingers from the right hand.”

Even for saintly relics,

it was a peculiar shopping list.

Pro forma
, Regulus protested.

Then he got the bones.

They won for the Church this headland,

so like lost Eden,

where once boars rutted through gorse;

and lapwings, in huge straggling flocks,

darkened the winter air.

Now golfers play in packs across the green,

under clouds like riffling wings,

crying “Allelujah” with every putt.

God's angels know what they are about.

—
JANE YOLEN

The Lesson on Guardian Angels at Star of the Sea Elementary

Sister Humiliana, sparrow

shaken from His dark sleeve

to watch over children

like rows of new corn

till God shall call you,

to keep His letters in line

aleph, beth, gimel
,

and camels, elephants,

and children,

each holding the apron strings

of the one in front of it—

Sister Liberata, hummingbird

that forgot how to walk,

in the photograph on the playground

you flap starched wings.

Your white habit is the laundry

of angels. Behind you,

Lake St. Clair unwinds

her wicked spools.

A storm is rising.

By this time you have both

crossed the equator into heaven,

leaving flocks of children

like shells at high tide

waiting for the whitecaps

to collect them.

—
NANCY WILLARD

The Twenty-eight Angels Ruling in the Twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon

In each house there is cheese on a table,

a mute pewter candlestick,

a bone-handled knife,

a wine goblet made from fired clay.

The wine is sweet,

the
challah
sweeter,

pulled like cloud taffy into braids.

There are no chairs;

who would sit, wings folded behind?

Cushions dot the floor,

needlework designs like stained glass

depicting each step

in the creation of the world.

Come, eat, you are too thin.

God likes his angels like apples,

plump in their autumn skins.

—
JANE YOLEN

Build a chair as if an angel were going to sit on it.

—
Thomas Merton

Angels among the Servants

St. Zita, patron saint

of scrub buckets and brooms,

spiritual adviser to mops,

protector of charwomen,

chambermaids, cooks,

those who wait on us

and mend our ways,

for forty-eight years you

lit the morning fire

in the dark kitchen

of Fatinelli of Lucca

and baked his bread,

till the Sunday you knew

you could not serve

two masters and did not open

the bins of flour or unlock

the treasures of yeast

and water. Telling no one,

you trudged off to Mass,

still wearing his keys

on your belt.

And while you opened your mouth

for the wafer, a coin

minted from moonlight,

angels arrived in aprons

and mixed light and salt,

and kneaded loaf after loaf,

punching them down

for their own good,

and praised the mystery

of bread, which rises to meet

its maker. But who

is the servant here?

The loaf will not rise

till the baker follows

the rules set down by the first loaf

for the ancient order of bread.

St. Zita, bless the fire

that boils water, the air

that dries clothes, and keys

that have lost their doors:

may angels keep them

from the deep river.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Photographing Angels

for Lilo Raymond

The first angel you brought us stands high

over a city which does not appear in the picture,

yet no one who sees the angel doubts

the city is there. He folds his arms,

swathed in stone, and turns his blank gaze to heaven.

His hair seems newly hatched, snaky curls,

his wings chunky as bread, the feathers cast

from a mold like a big cookie.

When he clarified himself in your darkroom,

you saw what the lens did not show you:

a fly perched on an angel's head.

The second angel you brought us slumps

on a wall by a dump which does not appear in the picture.

Broken from the start, she will never be whole

except in the eye of the beholder

who praises the mosaic painter's art,

though bricks and cement cake

the hem of her robe like a scab. Her head on her hand,

her eyes closed, her wings ashen, she drags her dark torch

on the ground like a broken umbrella.

She has sunk so far into herself not even you

could bring her to brightness,

though you brought her out of hiding.

Those years you photographed white curtains blowing

in white rooms over beds rumpled like ice floes,

you were honing your eye for what might dwell

in space as pure and simple as an egg.

The third angel you gave us holds a rose

so lightly it must have grown in a bed

where each rose chooses the hand that plucks it

and turns its open gaze on what rises and sets,

like a camera gathering the souls of pears,

the piety of eggs, the light in a dark room. Angels.

—
NANCY WILLARD

Jacob Boehme and the Angel

I

A light in his workshop

unlocked his sleep and, fearing

a fire, the shoemaker

ran barefoot

across the snow

and opened the door.

The angel was waiting

on sapphire feet.

The shoemaker measured,

marked, and cut. Soles,