While walking home from school on the edge of spring
I stopped to look at the skeletal branches of a tree
That shortly ago had been lacquered
by jewel bright ice
limbs hardsparkle
Cupping the sun like a waterglass.
I observed there the architecture of dreams
And came home to sketch it like prisms
Which refracted the brightness of the new sun
And shattered it hardsparkle
Into half a million shards of almost perfect
happiness,
Each bit as bright as a snowdrop.
We are far from the days where people wandered the desert
Dressed in homespun and speaking of angels.
Though it may be lovely to think back on them,
We live now in days of over-saturation,
Every beige desert desperately filled
With fake flowers and Technicolor dreaming—
While bathroom taps drip and then go dry.
Do angels speak now of us?
I think I hear their voices.
I can trace myself back in blood only two or three mothers,
And then the trail grows cold.
But I swear I can hear all the way back to the first fishes
Who began to wonder, after a thirsty, landlocked life,
and to whisper of Me; the eventual possibility of my birth
(by the seashore—they weren’t extravagant in their travel plans).
Did they speak of angels?
I doubt it; and yet
They still knew what was coming.
Now I walk home from school
And peer into every back alley,
Never knowing what I’ll find there.
I have in me some deep
untouchable well of happiness.
It is in shards,
But I have not dropped a single piece.
If I never speak the name of an angel,
I think they will still hear that I
have preserved something which belongs to them.
I enjoyed this! Keep up the good work