The Hastily Assembled Angel Falls at the…

Except most things weren’t clouds everything there

Was clouds the hastily assembled angel

Before he knew the word clouds was the last word

He heard the other angels shouting as

They shoved him though he after he had fallen

Too far to hear them he saw their mouths mak-

ing shapes that were not clouds and when he saw that

Thought That’s something that isn’t clouds that shouting

After I’ve fallen too far to hear them don’t

They know I’ve fallen too far to hear them now

Or are we not together now before

He knew the word in those few minutes the oth-

er angels were assembling him he named

The things he saw with words that seemed to fit them

Nothing was heavenly a few things were

Ocean and hole and monkeyapple he

Before the other angels shoved him had

Started combining words but nobody

Would name the things he saw the way he named them

And to the other angels all his naming

Was noise they shouted as they shoved him It’s

All clouds what difference could it make to the angel

Built to monitor the Earth from the surface

Of the Earth what was or wasn’t true in Heaven

They shoved him then they stared and then they shouted

After the disappearing figure all

The things they suddenly remembered they had

Forgotten to tell him as they were hammer-

ing him together as they hammered him

Together and behind them but above

Behind a pinkish light that was or was-

n’t God pulsed like the heart of one of the creatures

God hadn’t yet created though the angels

Had seen the creatures coming in the waves

Then covering the Earth the angels had

Seen them and didn’t want to be assigned

To live with them and so had voted to

Build their own angel but they didn’t ask

Permission first instead they built him quick-

ly and as Gabriel asked God if this

New angel could be sent instead to Earth

Fresh eyes for a fresh world the other angels

Shoved him the hastily assembled angel

From the cloud and Heaven he the hastily

Assembled angel could see farther than

The other angels though he couldn’t under-

stand what he saw as well as the other angels

Might have and as he fell he saw their mouths mak-

ing shapes he saw the light behind them pulsing

And as he fell he watched the clouds becoming

Abstract as any other angel would

From Heaven watch a species go extinct

Even as dry land emerged from the waves below him

Source: Poetry (November 2018)