Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #400 - Angels #2, a poem

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #400 - Angels #2, a poem

Hi Mom,

Back again for another Writerly Wednesday poem. Spent a lot of time selecting today's poem, and finally settled on this one as I believe it was written in the hottest part of summer as evidenced by the soggy night and the rumpled sheets near the end of it.

I wrote this around the same time I wrote a short story called "The Interiors of Angels." The story had nothing to do with angels except the question of what is inside angels came up in dialogue. I imagined that angels do not have human internal organs.

I wrote this to work out some ideas about angels and pain and regret and longing.

I do not think that this is a master work, but it has some interesting lines. I know I have had readers tell me not to apologize for my writing, but this was an "early" poem. Though I do not consider myself to be a poet (or a good poet), I did improve as a writer during my studies to earn my MFA. I wrote this poem in the summer of 1983, and we both know what happened that summer, Mom.

I don't know why, but this feels fitting for installment 400.

ANGELS # TWO


Wind fans the wings
of two angel-lovers
resting in the dark. The corners
of the night are turned back,
a bed ready. The testimony
to their love breathes
sharp and smooth as pipe music.
The testament collects dust-thin
eiderdowning their sleeptime --
A deja-vu blanket of yesterday.
They serenade bedtime
playing mandolins without hands.
The watch-moon sears
a brand on their beds of soil.
At final moon-crow the
locks click on oaken doors,
sealing their separate bedrooms.

The Angels preserve
their love in jars
lining cellar shelves.
Blindly, they plead for black bars
--dividing past and future, to open.
They hear the white man approach,
footsteps assaulting stone,
his scissors
clacking
-- the final treatment --
the pruning of justice.

Filmy silence static clings,
to the rumpled mattress,
between the two Angels fallen.
Their shame is betrayed
by the lonely scars
on their empty backs
brushing the white cotton sheets.
They moan at the key hole moon
in a soggy night.

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 402 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1608.10 - 10:10

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.