"Every angel is terrifying."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

for Carol Thomson

Suppose you're blind, and so you can't see
the broken necklace of geese sailing the sky,

then tilt up your face and listen as their honking riles
the air. And if somehow you're going deaf as well,

the cries of geese receding on the wind,
then lay your hand on bark to feel the wind

that sways the apple tree. Or if you can't feel
the tree, then pick and eat one perfect apple

or failing that, as air gets out its knives
smell the fall, swift falling in the leaves.

But oh, if all is growing dark, the darkness
swallowing up the tree, its apples, leaves, and geese,

and if you think a hawk is circling in the final
autumn air, then let the splendid angel

come, my friend, to read your rights to you,
quicksilver angel, angel of snow, the lover who

has waited all your life at your elbow.  

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Jeanne Murray Walker is the author of A Deed to the Light (University of Illinois Press) and six other collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Image, and other periodicals. Among her awards are seven Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Awards, an NEA Fellowship, and a Pew Fellowship. An Atlantic Monthly Fellow at Bread Loaf School of English, Jeanne is also a playwright whose scripts for the theatre have been produced around the country and in England.
recent book by Jeanne Murray Walker  

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