Today's poem is by John Biguenet

The Creation of Angels
       

Something, after all, had to fill the spaces,
the vacant interstices between this and that,
between looking through a window at dusk
and finding ourselves embedded in the glass.
Something had to be imagined, a face at least
if not a mouth that might explain just why
we always felt someone's eyes upon us
even if those eyes were really just our own.

Making love, for instance, how could we understand
the two breaths rising above us twined as one,
like a rope cast up into the air that for a moment—
no, longer—stood firm, erect, as if we might climb,
swim along its length out of the depths,
following the murmured bubbles up toward the light
if not to a heaven for—whom else? —others like us,
spent insubstance, sexless and unfleshed?

And afterward, in that fresh, tormenting silence,
as our bodies settled like mud in roiled water
sinking to the bed until nothing solid remained
but the thick clarity of water, and on the other side,
in the sky it seemed, reflections floating above us,
staring back, curious, uncomprehending,
reflections we could not bring ourselves to recognize,
and so we called them—us, that is—angels.

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Copyright © 2024 John Biguenet All rights reserved
from Five Points
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission