You are as quiet as the grave.
The head turned, your eyes
averted, as though gazing
at infinitudes of inwardness.
Waiting. Silent as the stone,
you might seem astonished
by the infidelities of time.
The other angels are all gone.
Departure is the deepest loss.
You remain, your wings
stretched for flight, bereft
of leaving, poised on stillness.
And you look into that space,
centre that is everywhere
within, where God appears
so suddenly alive and always.
It's just there, beside the
fire-place: a nook, a cranny
really, rather than a corner
but when you were four
at least it really was a corner.
It had all the possibilities.
You felt secure in there;
we knew this, for you often
fell asleep in it. Or when
you stole the honey-jar,
that was the place we found
you, holding it aloft with
shining eyes: just finished!
Other times, you hid in there
to sulk, to punish us until
we'd searched the road,
the creek, the pine plantation,
asking all the neighbours...
Sometimes, you would
simply take your favourite doll
and tell it all those secrets.
Now you are grown-up
the corner seems so very small;
you stand and gaze at it
and wish there was a place
like that, where there still was
anything but knowledge.
A crack in the window-pane
oozes with the brilliant sap
of the rising sun. The tree
outside projects its tracery
into my bedroom, right across
the objective field of vision;
the light along the crack
is its first elusive blossoming
towards another world. In this
moment every tree is other
than its darkest branching.
Things are happening: the tree
is there, in the early garden.
And I hear the cry rising in my
throat ... I flap into its foliage …