May 2018
Penny Harter
penhart@2hweb.net
penhart@2hweb.net
In 2002, after eleven years living in Santa Fe (a mid-life leap after living most of our lives in NJ), my late husband Bill Higginson and I moved back to northern NJ to be closer to family again. Grandchildren started being born, plus we missed our kids. After Bill died in 2008, I moved again, down to the South Jersey shore area to be near my daughter and her family. I am about a forty-minute drive inland, on winding country roads, from the Atlantic Ocean.
Honoring Angels
We honor them as if we know precisely
what they are, or what they were, unfurling
their huge wings and peering from the pages
of the Bible or other ancient texts.
Astronauts claim to have seen giant white
winged beings out there beside their ship,
keeping perfect pace. Did they share a vision?
Receive a visitation?
Angels enter dreams with warnings,
prophecies, orders from the Holy Spirit,
announce incarnations, even sometimes
raise those blessed by their presence into
the blazing habitat of God.
In a long ago dream one grabbed my hair
and swung me round and round as if we were
playing a child’s game. I knew she would
soon let go, flinging me into the coral mist
surrounding us both, but I was afraid so woke
myself into a dark and empty room.
When an angel visits, should we hold on tight,
our mortal hand locked in her own and let her
do with us as she will? Or should we wrestle him
to anchor in this world, beg for answers to
questions we can barely frame—demand
that he unmask and make us whole?
A Far Field
The two angels in the stained glass window
are leaning over a tablet they can't translate.
Their eyes are fixed on a far field.
The letters, carved in an alien tongue,
might say something about salvation
or damnation, both beyond them.
Moving eternally toward one another,
they will never arrive at touch, will never
feel the enormous weight of their wings,
will never decipher
the beginning word—
or the last.
Of Beak and Blood
A friend gave me an angel,
black icon atop an iron rod
that holds a votive candle
in a circle of iron.
The angel is small, her head round.
No features grace her face,
though her robed arms are open
as if in benediction above the flame
that I will never light.
To honor my guardian, I have made an altar,
stuck a trinity of feathers into the space
between the holder and its white candle.
The first, serrated beige and brown,
seems fallen from some hawk’s wing.
The second, a striped and fluffy shaft,
dropped from a fledgling raptor’s breast,
and the dark spine of the third
separates black from gray—
night from day.
Ringing the candle, these feathers
bear memories of beak and blood
which I offer to this angel, hoping
she can taste them on her iron tongue
[Previously published in The Night Marsh, 2008]
We honor them as if we know precisely
what they are, or what they were, unfurling
their huge wings and peering from the pages
of the Bible or other ancient texts.
Astronauts claim to have seen giant white
winged beings out there beside their ship,
keeping perfect pace. Did they share a vision?
Receive a visitation?
Angels enter dreams with warnings,
prophecies, orders from the Holy Spirit,
announce incarnations, even sometimes
raise those blessed by their presence into
the blazing habitat of God.
In a long ago dream one grabbed my hair
and swung me round and round as if we were
playing a child’s game. I knew she would
soon let go, flinging me into the coral mist
surrounding us both, but I was afraid so woke
myself into a dark and empty room.
When an angel visits, should we hold on tight,
our mortal hand locked in her own and let her
do with us as she will? Or should we wrestle him
to anchor in this world, beg for answers to
questions we can barely frame—demand
that he unmask and make us whole?
A Far Field
The two angels in the stained glass window
are leaning over a tablet they can't translate.
Their eyes are fixed on a far field.
The letters, carved in an alien tongue,
might say something about salvation
or damnation, both beyond them.
Moving eternally toward one another,
they will never arrive at touch, will never
feel the enormous weight of their wings,
will never decipher
the beginning word—
or the last.
Of Beak and Blood
A friend gave me an angel,
black icon atop an iron rod
that holds a votive candle
in a circle of iron.
The angel is small, her head round.
No features grace her face,
though her robed arms are open
as if in benediction above the flame
that I will never light.
To honor my guardian, I have made an altar,
stuck a trinity of feathers into the space
between the holder and its white candle.
The first, serrated beige and brown,
seems fallen from some hawk’s wing.
The second, a striped and fluffy shaft,
dropped from a fledgling raptor’s breast,
and the dark spine of the third
separates black from gray—
night from day.
Ringing the candle, these feathers
bear memories of beak and blood
which I offer to this angel, hoping
she can taste them on her iron tongue
[Previously published in The Night Marsh, 2008]
© 2018 Penny Harter
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