Agent of Providence, and: Changeling, and: Safety of Small Things
Rent from DeepDyve- Agent of Providence, and: Changeling, and: Safety of Small Things
AGENT OF PROVIDENCE
Roma Downey glows on the television screen,her angel touch dispensed, the plot line closed.I have muted the sound as my mother drifts toward sleep.We shiver in the bare, temporary room where she has comefor transfusion. I drowse over my coffee.It’s not like that, she declares.I rouse; arch an eyebrow in response.Angels. She gestures toward the TV asher IV tubes arc out and glitter. Not at all.
She ought to know. My mother once diedand went to Heaven. In a coma for three weeks,one long night set off bells and alarms for the ICU.She told anyone who would listen that she ascendedthrough pink clouds that smelled of roses to meet Jesus,who she assured us would nowadays be detainedat any airport, looked nothing like in Sunday School.She asked if she had gained Heaven.Jesus assured her it would be whatever she desiredparadise to be, but not yet. He sent her home,“you’re not done suffering yet.”
Angels brought me back. Big scary angels with narya feather in sight. People have it wrongwhen they show pretty women and fat baby angels.Was anybody in the Bible glad to see angels? Mostly not,Jacob wrestled his, Sarah laughed at hers, Lot’s scaredhim enough to flee Sodom dragging his family. Mary metGabriel, that poor little girl. Just imagine. The shepherdsin Bethlehem were sore afraid. Them angels in the lion’s den [End Page 44] and fiery furnace weren’t fellows to mess with, no,or the one set at the gates of Eden with a fiery sword.
She falls back into meds and sleeps. I studyangels on my phone, find that onlycherubim and seraphim sprout wings.I ponder archangels, find Gabriel and Michael,learn Raphael and Uriel of the flaming sword.The Kabbalah names seven: one with the gloriousname, Metatron, fit for a superhero.
We, created less than the angels, reduced them,rendered them as harp-wielding and infantile.Should I, like the psalmist, call on angels for help,I want a being who can stand in the presence of God,who bears a sword, or commands a voice like a lion,to be the agent of Providence and the harbinger of grace. [End Page 45]
CHANGELING
When sorrow comes to your bedlike a just-weaned child, remembersharp teeth and an appetite too largeto succor. It has its own bed, its ownplace, so you both rest, so in the lightof day you give it what it needs,not what it wants.
It may have the face of lovebut sorrow thinks onlyof itself, wails in the darkwhere it must learn to sleep. [End Page 46]
SAFETY OF SMALL THINGS
Deadfall disallows glimpses and visitswith deer and woodpeckers.The squirrels and chipmunks, near frantic,ignore the hiker on the path.The fox has gone to ground.A rain moves through.The pin oaks rattle and branches clack;the wind worries the ridge. On the lee side,an inch worm measures a shelf fungus.
Here, a night nest, warm wallowin the tall grass that edges the brush pile—a deliberate thicket composed for the safetyof small things. Tunnels and trails,marked by tufts of hair and feathers,lead to an unseen world that flourisheswhile I sleep. [End Page 47]
A native of upper East Tennessee, Jane Hicks is an award-winning poet and quilter. Her poetry appears widely in journals and anthologies. Her “literary quilts” illustrate the works of playwright Jo Carson and novelists Sharyn McCrumb and Silas House and were featured in Blue Ridge Country Magazine. Hicks has published two poetry collections, Blood and Bone Remember (2005) and Driving with the Dead (2014).
