The Lighthouse Keeper

I aimed a rock at the back of the angel’s headand hit him. He fell. That eveningI found him at the old harbortangled in the electric lines,his left wing was burnt, in the night airan acrid stink of feathers.I bound his hands with fisherman’s rope,hefted him into the bed of my pickupand drove along the coastal highway home.

I opened a beer and waitedfor the angel to awaken.When I stroked his wingsthey releaseda silken mica-like dust onto my fingerslike what remainsafter you catch hold of a moth,feel its tiny fury of wings battlingwithin your pinned hands.

The sleeping angel’s naked bodyis a marvel, his copper skinsun-darkened from flying.

Is this skybound feral boythe sun’s sole child?What if he’s half human, half wild?Exiled from the afterworld?Escaped as Icarus?Like a muddy oyster shucked,the pearls of his eyesopened—but no pupils, only two gray orphanslike a compasswithout a magnetic field.

If God wanted his angel backHe’d have to come claim him Himself.

And so I chained the angel to the radiatorand began to build a cage by the window.

Each day I bring the angel honey from wild bees. I sing the only song my mother ever sang to me:

Mama’s little baby love shortnin’, shortnin’, Mama’s little baby love shortnin’ bread.

He licks the honey from my open hand;thrill of his lion’s-hot tonguemuscling between the slats of his cage.

At dawn the angel watches the fishermen departin battered boats. Wings spread wideas a buzzard’she suns himself by the windowand keeps ceaseless watchover the empty harbor at low tide,the sky absent of all but cryinggulls as they coast on invisible wind.