Angels

Butterflies

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Butterflies

We raise our hands:
you sever them at the wrist.

We lift our arms:
you measure us for a cross.
Where do we turn?
Our fingers bleed from scratching
our skulls in bewilderment.
They catch on the thorns
you so thoughtfully provided.

Stigmata?
No, you haven’t nailed us yet.
Great barbed hooks penetrate our bellies,
inflaming our guts.

Like live bait,
threaded to tempt Leviathan,
we squirm.

Like butterflies
awaiting your chloroform jar,
we tremble

Your collector’s pin is poised:
that final thrust will skewer our flanks
and claim us under glass.

Eternally.

All About Angels

 

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All About Angels

Angels: many people believe in them, some people don’t. ‘What are they really like?’ you ask. Well, the ones I have seen, and they are the only ones I can talk about, are nothing like the angels we see in old church paintings.

 Angels visit me regularly. They speak to me through the mouths of innocent birds and beasts and I listen to them carefully, for they are the messengers of Gaia, the earth goddess. If we do not listen to the earth goddess, if we don’t pay attention to her words, the earth and the people who live on it will be in serious trouble, sooner or later.

 So, go out into the garden and the woods. Walk softly. Stand beneath autumn trees. Watch for footprints in the winter snow. Above all, watch out for the living creatures with which we share our world. Listen to them when they speak to you. Pay attention to their words. Do not ignore them, and remember St. Francis of Assisi who called them his brothers and sisters, for that’s exactly what they are. They are our extended family and as we treat them, so will we ourselves be treated when Gaia, the earth goddess, calls us home.

Pensive Angel

 “A penny for your thoughts!”

 The pansies turned their heads,
gazing at her with great disdain.

 They are the lowest of the low,
yet grow again, each year,
from their own scattered seed,
like weeds.

 Their faces are beautiful,
bursting suddenly from winter’s
white dream.

 They create pastel thoughts and fill
the flowerbeds with secret dreams
that they alone can see.

All About Angels, my next book of poetry,  will soon be available on Amazon and Kindle.

Late Summer Angel

 

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Late Summer Angel

“It’s good to stop, while mowing,
and to rescue that one red leaf,
and that one yellow leaf,
and that other leaf
the sun has spotted,
like an old man’s hand.

And it’s good to stay
bent over for a while,
to rest and to gaze
at the October fungi,
mushrooms and toadstools,
thrusting from the earth:
puff balls, dust balls,
little brown umbrellas.

 And it’s good to see
where the moles
have dug new houses.”

 “Better yet,”
says the autumn angel,
“is to stand beneath
the trees, drinking up
the sunlight.

Raise your hand and see
your skin fragmented
into a coat of many colors.”

 Sunshine through
a stained glass window.

 Light rains
droplets down
through speckled leaves.

Note: Late Summer Angel is from All About Angels, the poetry collection that I am currently revising for re-publication. It will be available online at Amazon and Kindle in time for Christmas, 2016.

 

 

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Talking with my mother in an empty house

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pale and delicate
much too frail to survive

an early butterfly
blows against your rose bush
and is caught on a thorn

the white of its shredded wing
a sudden shriek
bleeding snow over the garden

did you write those words to disguise my voice?
am i the butterfly?
 does your writing echo my cry?

thoughts pound through my head
like waves on the shoreline
each spoken word
a grinding of tiny pebbles

 

Golden Angels

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Golden Angels
(from All About Angels)

They stand beneath guardian trees
their saffron garments glossed with gold.

Hands cupped, bodies bent,
they softly swell as they dip
beneath the rain.

They speak to me:
wild prophets from an ancestral book
that I believed in when I was a child,
but no longer understand.

I try to read the aroma of their lips,
their slow, small growth of gesture.

Their wings are traps
tripping my tongue
preventing me from flight.