Snow Angels

I was six. No, five, I was five: my first snow.

I remember the angel suddenly coming together

and then bleeding out underneath me

like I was turning myself inside out,

and then I remember awakening to a white field,

because the angels were always a surprise to me,

the way they kept falling in such peculiar positions,

like someone screaming, or dying.

Like the wings.

Friends would take me aside,

tell me the wings were a bit too much:

Like a Babylonian lion's, really. Those wings, they'd say.

They were right of course, but what

could I say to them except

I couldn't help it, that my arms

always moved up and down like that

whenever I fell down out of heaven.

Sometimes I felt like telling them

maybe it would help if they thought of the angels

as small relief-maps of my soul, sudden,

uncontrolled curdlings that occurred

whenever I stopped, opened myself to the sun, or the moon.

And then there were times I didn't know what to say,

except maybe they should think of them

as detailed descriptions of another life.

A life I was living but knew nothing about.