SNOW ANGELS

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

I remember the angel suddenly coming together

and then bleeding out beneath 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 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 the angels

as detailed descriptions of another life.

A life I was living but knew nothing about.