She bleeds again today so you are not yet a worldly thing: invisible—
true: only between two people. Angels do not deal with a concept.
Now she and I will have a drink we have not had before, wait in the thick
air of the next week, like sea fog, afraid to speak of where the tender shore
washes away like a dream. Why do you move from shore? Why do you
not rise out of the ocean on a turtle’s back to us? She is crying again today;
she is in bed, on the phone; she is in the shower a long time. I have found a way
for us to do work together: she tells me where to plant the lavender,
sedum, coreopsis, and I plant them. Do angels care? They are singing
in the day-sleep of our sorrow. They are planting shrubs when there is
a life’s work to complete; but to be complete there is no more work to be done,
except for the waiting of a new opportunity. She is now under the stars. To think
there is a man or a woman up there that I cannot see, that will be a part of me.
If you do not get here I will split the angels down their backs and rescue you
from inside. Take as many as I must to keep from burying you again.
Now she and I are in bed, silent; hear the rafters and studs
rub the sheetrock and snap as their shape changes, as the house cools
in the night – another lonely night of dreams, another waking
to frustration, another day of emptiness. How we have been wasted,
sitting in front of the curtain of our own desire. You are sitting there,
somewhere in the theater of our heart. There are two angels cut from stone,
one has a shield, one a head-lamp and forceps. Tell me angels, tell me
how the beginning should be. Tell me, what is it to feel and never see?
Show me the way up the cliff where she and I can dive into an ocean.
Speak to me when it rains again and stars fall. Address your plan
to walk me between you held by the elbows. Tell me where we will go.