the lion and the lamb lie down,
the moon marries the sun.
So take yourselves to Bethlehem.
The Prince of Peace has come.”
—NANCY WILLARD
An Angel Tells the Birds to Gather for the Great Supper of God
Robins and meadowlarks,
and the horned owls, who tune
their talons to the dark;
herons and doves and loons;
birds molting like the moon,
who turns her speckled face
on fields of empty space;
blackbirds whose polished wings
God nicked with holy fire;
and birds with names not heard
on any singer’s mouth—
fly to the feast,
from north and south,
from west and east.
—NANCY WILLARD
Dancing with Angels
I am flat-footed, left-footed,
my heel narrower than my toes.
Slippery surfaces defeat me.
When I was younger
my port de bras carried me
through the lower grades.
Mr. B. smiled on me,
so like a god.
I danced with angels,
their wild wings in fourth position,
our toe shoes slip-slip-slapping
on the heads of pins.
—JANE YOLEN
Aunt Fanny
They were introduced, Mother said,
by a holy angel,
so what she was wearing a shmata
on her gray hair,
three black hairs protruding
from her chin.
She sucked lemons at night,
the room smelling like air freshener,
and she snored, a regular little engine.
Her shoes were always broken-down—
bunions, Mother said.
She made applesauce the old way,
from sour apples, could curl your tongue up.
At weddings she danced by herself,
all in a circle, clockwise;
at funerals she wept holding
the hands of other mourners.
She made a shidekh, it stuck, though,
so all the rest was forgiven.
Matchmakers are allowed
their little peculiarities,
like angels their wings, their halos.
—JANE YOLEN
Harpo and the Angel
The manager gave me a harp
who cried on my shoulder,
the left one, as I hunted and picked,
pondered and plucked.
She wanted to be a tree again,
to sing in a thousand tongues,
leaves tilting in the wind.
Now in the dark theater
she went speechless with grief
and showed me the syntax of silence,
its flowers and perfumes,
its chasms of light.
I was her silent brother,
even on Broadway. After one year
I could play “Annie Laurie.”
When the crowd cried encore
I played it again.
Halfway home, I lost myself
in the crammed windows
of F. W. Woolworth and his
framed pictures, so cheap
even I could afford
the Grand Canyon,
a clipper at full sail,
my own face in the glass,
everything washed in heavenly light,
and nothing with a right to it, except
an angel in the middle,
as comfortable on her cloud
as if she were waiting for the bus
and to make the time go faster
playing her harp, which she leaned
against her right shoulder,
showing me how to hold my harp,
knowing what I needed to know,
and giving me private lessons.
—NANCY WILLARD
An Inconvenience of Wings
In my book of prayers I studied
the picture of Saint Peter, leather apron,
keys at his belt, waking the souls
in their heavenly orphanage.
On the nightstand by each bed
gleams a blue pitcher,
a white cup, and candlestick.
It is clean there.
Six souls share the ewer and basin,
soap and towel. Between their cots
twelve slippers nap side by side
like cats on the cloud floor.
It is cold there. The souls curl
under their quilts, wings hugging
their backs. How terrible for them
when a foot tingles,
“Growing pains,” my mother said
when leg cramps staggered me from bed.
“Stand up. Put your weight on it.”
—NANCY WILLARD
Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
—G. K. Chesterton
Angels Fly
Angels fly
because
they take themselves
lightly between the thumb
and forefinger,
and lift themselves
above the casual world.
Angels fly
because
they take themselves
lightly as flour on a board,
rising in yeasty splendor
into the bowl of the sky.
Angels fly
because
they take themselves
lightly as sun
on dark water,
breaking into motes
that float along the tumbling stream.
Angels fly
because
they take themselves
lightly above
the gravity
of any situation.
Angels fly
because
they take themselves
lightly.
—JANE YOLEN
The Winged Ones
No birthday gift whiter or stranger
than this large pair of wings
my son bought on Amsterdam Avenue.
Pressed from celluloid, thick
as a toenail; two basins
that crease the morning light
in deeply stamped feathers.
A fossil from heaven. The tag
warns: “Not intended for flight.”
“One size fits all,” you assure me
and unfold the intricate harness
and buckle the wings to my body
that never sprang from a sill
or plotted the air through a thicket
or turned on the lathe of a wind
that could snuff out the breath in me
and toss me out of my garden.
There’s no finer sight in summer
than yourself wearing them,
making the rounds in Eden,
inspecting the spotted throat
of the lily, the fern’s plumage,
stepping behind your girl
quiet as mint on the move
in the woods where the owl lives
and hugging her where the gate was,
angel who forgives.
—NANCY WILLARD
Metamorph
I have given away my wings;
a feather on the mantle reminds me;
each bird song recalls that transformation.
My shoulders, like a mother’s memory book,
hold aches as painful as old photographs.
Nothing, nothing is truly given away.
When Lucifer streaked across
God’s clean sky,
we did not see the writing on it
for a thousand thousand
light-stained years.
—JANE YOLEN
Angel Feather
&nb
sp; Here is the quill,
Here the vane,
A hymnal of ivory,
A canticle of bone.
We rise with the light,
Benedicte to the dawn,
Dive arrow-slim into the East
And with a prayer—
gone.
—JANE YOLEN
Angel in a Window
Night has fallen in Gethsemane so fast
it bruises the lilies of the field.
Over the altar, the angel
in tailored moss and russet wings
still hovers above the acolyte
who touches his wand to the tapers
and wakes them for vespers.
With their brass collars turned,
two flames bow to each other.
In the dark suburbs
to the right of the altar
prayer candles flicker among themselves
like deaf children in the park
after supper, waiting
for the big lights to wake
over the empty field.
—NANCY WILLARD
Lucifer
Turning and turning,
He falls fair
Into the morning,
Below God’s laughter;
Feathers like fingers
Clutching the air,
Dragging and dragging
Fell night after.
—JANE YOLEN
Easter Sermon
Do not mention angels, I am warned.
Unitarians do not believe.
My talk, therefore, is of a feral child,
mute in its wild agonies,
given no tongue by God
but the raven’s,
the nightjar’s,
the spotted snake’s,
the wolf’s.
Overhead a fan, like angel wings,
beats out a different tale.
The children gaze upward;
the adults stare down at their feet.
Afterward, each confession whispers into my ear:
“I believe in angels.”
“I believe.”
Someone flies heavenward from church,
laughter floating down like feathers,
like sermons from the sky,
I believe.
—JANE YOLEN
Harahel Writes on the Head of a Pin
Hunched by the candle,
wings humped behind,
the angel of archives
scribbles his prayers.
Shema Yisroel
one hundred thousand times;
the tiny consonants
lumining his face,
his chin so bearded
with the light,
passing cherubim
mistake him for
God.
It is always thus
with writers.
—JANE YOLEN
Gabriel Returns from the Annunciation
Notice the wings of the angel
streaming from his body as he crosses
the open palms of the water.
When the ocean shows him
her many little knives,
his wings tremble and fray,
and the salt diamonds them.
They open like valves of light.
—NANCY WILLARD
Angelic Script
In the year 1327,
no longer happy with buttressed Gothic,
angels developed their own script.
Teiazel, tired of men of letters,
created two fonts:
Celeste and Malachim:
from aleph to taw
the serifs soared like comet heads
on the stands of each stroke.
You do not believe me?
It is so written
in the Dictionary of Angels,
and such volumes do not repeat lies.
—JANE YOLEN
The Founding of Saint Andrews
Brother Regulus awoke,
the light in his cell like dawn.
An angel squatted in it,
robe hitched up to his heavenly knees.
“Regulus,” the angel said
in a voice so like fire,
one of his glorious eyebrows
was slightly singed with smoke.
“Bring the tooth. Kneecap, too.
Don’t forget the upper armbone,
three fingers from the right hand.”
Even for saintly relics,
it was a peculiar shopping list.
Pro forma, Regulus protested.
Then he got the bones.
They won for the Church this headland,
so like lost Eden,
where once boars rutted through gorse;
and lapwings, in huge straggling flocks,
darkened the winter air.
Now golfers play in packs across the green,
under clouds like riffling wings,
crying “Allelujah” with every putt.
God’s angels know what they are about.
—JANE YOLEN
The Lesson on Guardian Angels at Star of the Sea Elementary
Sister Humiliana, sparrow
shaken from His dark sleeve
to watch over children
like rows of new corn
till God shall call you,
to keep His letters in line
aleph, beth, gimel,
and camels, elephants,
and children,
each holding the apron strings
of the one in front of it—
Sister Liberata, hummingbird
that forgot how to walk,
in the photograph on the playground
you flap starched wings.
Your white habit is the laundry
of angels. Behind you,
Lake St. Clair unwinds
her wicked spools.
A storm is rising.
By this time you have both
crossed the equator into heaven,
leaving flocks of children
like shells at high tide
waiting for the whitecaps
to collect them.
—NANCY WILLARD
The Twenty-eight Angels Ruling in the Twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon
In each house there is cheese on a table,
a mute pewter candlestick,
a bone-handled knife,
a wine goblet made from fired clay.
The wine is sweet,
the challah sweeter,
pulled like cloud taffy into braids.
There are no chairs;
who would sit, wings folded behind?
Cushions dot the floor,
needlework designs like stained glass
depicting each step
in the creation of the world.
Come, eat, you are too thin.
God likes his angels like apples,
plump in their autumn skins.
—JANE YOLEN
Build a chair as if an angel were going to sit on it.
—Thomas Merton
Angels among the Servants
St. Zita, patron saint
of scrub buckets and brooms,
spiritual adviser to mops,
protector of charwomen,
chambermaids, cooks,
those who wait on us
and mend our ways,
for forty-eight years you
lit the morning fire
in the dark kitchen
of Fatinelli of Lucca
and baked his bread,
till the Sunday you knew
you could not serve
two masters and did not open
the bins of flour or unlock
the treasures of yeast
and water. Telling no one,
you trudged off to Mass,
still wearing his keys
on your belt.
And while you opened your mouth
for the wafer, a coin
minted from moonlight,
angels arrived in aprons
and mixed light and salt,
and kneaded loaf after loaf,
punching them down
for their own good,
and praised the mystery
of bread, which rises to meet
its maker. But who
is the servant here?
The loaf will not rise
till the baker follows
the rules set down by the first loaf
for the ancient order of bread.
St. Zita, bless the fire
that boils water, the air
that dries clothes, and keys
that have lost their doors:
may angels keep them
from the deep river.
—NANCY WILLARD
Photographing Angels
for Lilo Raymond
The first angel you brought us stands high
over a city which does not appear in the picture,
yet no one who sees the angel doubts
the city is there. He folds his arms,
swathed in stone, and turns his blank gaze to heaven.
His hair seems newly hatched, snaky curls,
his wings chunky as bread, the feathers cast
from a mold like a big cookie.
When he clarified himself in your darkroom,
you saw what the lens did not show you:
a fly perched on an angel’s head.
The second angel you brought us slumps
on a wall by a dump which does not appear in the picture.
Broken from the start, she will never be whole
except in the eye of the beholder
who praises the mosaic painter’s art,
though bricks and cement cake
the hem of her robe like a scab. Her head on her hand,
her eyes closed, her wings ashen, she drags her dark torch
on the ground like a broken umbrella.
She has sunk so far into herself not even you
could bring her to brightness,
though you brought her out of hiding.
Those years you photographed white curtains blowing
in white rooms over beds rumpled like ice floes,
you were honing your eye for what might dwell
in space as pure and simple as an egg.
The third angel you gave us holds a rose
so lightly it must have grown in a bed
where each rose chooses the hand that plucks it
and turns its open gaze on what rises and sets,
like a camera gathering the souls of pears,
the piety of eggs, the light in a dark room. Angels.
—NANCY WILLARD
Jacob Boehme and the Angel