Where to Look for Angels

THE TRUE NATURE OF ANGELS
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Every angel is terrifying.
—Rainer Maria Rilke

The Bohemian Austrian poet
on whose imperial sadness
a century has draped black silk
believed them huge.
His inmost boyhood, forever stunned
by a girl’s name, hair and skirts,
lived hypnotized by angels,
dived nose first into their embrace.
Far down that dark cleft
he found, then lost, his infant cry
(squeezed out by comfort and
terror in that helpful vise, those
visiting aunt’s breasts).
But always they arrived
in silence and vapor, the smoke
of overtones far below the lowest octave,
and always they would
goad him to shout
word pebbles into their echo.
That’s how angels torment genius,
knowing it abler than us to take
Sistine terrors, Empire State passions.
For most of us, these crosstown spirits
bring strange fevers and fears,
which make us look out, look up,
blind eyes bathed in snow mirage.
Angels are visions radiant with wings,
yes, and we are primates that gape,
our brains full of sky and poetry,
after a celestial Bigfoot’s forty feet.
How quickly we inflate our intercessors
to Macy’s parade balloon size.
Boastful of our mistaken metrics,
as if guaranteed bigger angels new
and improved, we’re votive tourists
making mouths at skyscrapers.
Look for angels instead
in little gaps between thought,
when minds run like newspapers
shorn of headlines on broken engagements
or heatstroke, and for minus
five seconds you’ve dropped
all memory of why or when
did this happen?
This is a lubricating angel,
careful of microfine tolerances, that
brain pistons not overheat.
More frightening
is the nightmare kind who opens
dreams a fraction of an inch.
That’s why memories
twist hard between dusk and dawn,
why we awaken knowing
our films are exposed.
Smaller than electrons these wraiths
retain advantage like fulcrums,
wander our inmost vein plaques
and skin craters, digging into our
hopes and conscience
with maggot patience and depth,
like nostalgia, like remorse.
That crack you heard when you
stood up and thought
your knees had given out?
Just one of their mortality tests.

(previously published in American River Review)

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Thanks, Tom!

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)