How to Interrogate an Archangel, and Calling Out the Names
- How to Interrogate an Archangel, and Calling Out the Names
How to Interrogate an Archangel
Offer firewood, strike up a flame. You won'tget anything out of him while he'sshivering. What you want is the statuesquegesture of confidence, the clarityderived from a place at the deity'sright hand. Keep the coercion to a minimumwhen wrestling with a spirituallydisheveled higher being. Your positioncan sour, leaving you with nothing butpine needles in your hands. Askthe most urgent questions first: whyare armies, and is it malignant, and whokeeps tabs on the status of the platypus?Remember information is secondaryto your purpose. The voice matters most:that melody can repair all the torn pagesbut first you have to recognize what you've caughtin your own human hands, on an ordinarycity street, in the middle of March. [End Page 22]
Calling Out the Names
Stripped of leaves, each limb exposed, maple remembers the whoosh of branches lush with wind and shade.
Even frozen solid or emptied by drought, river remembers flood banks, the pulse of current.
Grain in the loaf remembers field.
Scar remembers knife, but also suture and the hand that bandaged. Bed recalls absent sleeper
damp breath on the pillow. Brush, stilled on the dresser, remembers knots and what followed the untangling.
Honey remembers hive, bee and blossom.
Salmon tastes home in the scent of its birth stream.
Sand remembers shell. Gravel, the granite cliff. Lung, breath. Throat, song.
And I remember you. [End Page 23]
Elizabeth Austen is a former Washington State poet laureate, and author of Every Dress a Decision (Blue Begonia Press, 2011) and two chapbooks. For the past decade, she's led poetry and reflective writing sessions for clinicians in a variety of healthcare settings. "Calling Out the Names" was commissioned by Seattle Children's Hospital for the annual memorial service for children who have died.
