Poem 149: Letting an Angel Pass

a yellow wind into the green sail of the morning
flashes a crimson wing as the angel opens her eyes,
and you can see that you can see,
this rainbow shining cloud, sun becoming day
in her smiling invocation of the interior plane,
moving from limitless blue to turquoise
heralds the flying fish shedding water and light,
as the life of the ocean breathes under water
and above, as we holding our breath so
as the light thunders and shakes
and is hung with the early stalking darkness
of the lame man and his three legged blind dog
roaring his canon into the dark
as the angel closes her eyes.

To recall sweetly the simplest of love letters
amongst the dead moths and blue motets
concertinaed in a dove tailed fan that pictures
the faded Spanish Garden, where on a violet swing
she swings out and back above the flowers that bend
below the clouds as they wait for the end
of summer, in the stillness of these trees, scudding
with the echoes of the black Oriole’s dream
of riding the web of air, gathering space into her arc of light
where once he was caught in the lock of her hair and
gathered in by her exultant sound that released him gratefully
like an echo, an echo, echo, ecco
as the angel opens her eyes
and the wall to wall shadow becomes sunlight.