Angel

ANGEL / Barbara Moore Sometimes a man makes an angel Out of his bright confusion, clothes it, Sets it in the middle of things: The hedgerows play pitch and toss, The breath of the unborn blows over: Blackbirds take off like smoke In the terrible light of the ordinary. We rise, enter the world, equivocations greening How is it you count every face Without arriving at scorn? Children swarm out of the schoolyard, Their hearts clapped in tremulous hornbooks, They know what they know. We greet them in the light, the shade, An old board full of nails and dew. Speak, Say what you are, brooding In painful complicity: A long sunset begins, a red trestle Thrown over the dark machines. 22 · The Missouri Review ...