A Meeting of Angels

This is how we’d like them to be:
solid, touchable,
a matter-of-fact oh, excuse me
near-collision of wings
as they land, settle
within a breath of each other,
making, at least from a distance,
a serendipitous T
suggesting a relation between
horizontal and vertical worlds.
 
Standing closer, we sense movement
within the marble,
as if they’re wrestling with gravity
and the suddenness of being here,
as if the pristine whiteness
is not their natural colour
but what we expect of them,
as if the jubilation of their song
has dissolved in hum,
stilling the air around them.
 
Some of us hover, drawn into a sound
we cannot hear but feel on our palms,
our tongues; the soles of our feet
like magnets fixing us to the ground,
aligning us with the stone.
Our breathing stops, then deepens;
we keep listening, waiting
for buried chords to bring coherence,
for feathers, even with burnt edges,
to break surface, fly free.
 

Carol DeVaughn

in collection Life Class, 2018, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-906856-81-6;
first published in Scintilla, 2012,
ISBN 978-0-9555232-5-0 / ISSN 1368-5023