Among Angels Read online

  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,

  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

&nb
sp; 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<
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  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