Who Among the Angel's Hierarchies

A narrative poem about the frailty of one's heart and life on this earth as told through an encounter with the divine.

One night you were walking, along the coast

Of Brittany, where the waves crested

Pulled up by the midsummer moon

And you watched their black forms dance to the beat of the wind

Imagining, all the while, how they stroked the towers of Ys

Below them, the most beautiful city in Europe swallowed whole

Thousands of years past

 

As your boots made prints of your passing

In the sands like white alabaster

A figure approached you

Floating the opposite way

Floating! Her feet seemed to graze

Not a single grain as she moved

While at your feet, the sand crested

As waves do, at the stern of a heavy ship

Passing through the sea

 

A soft light distilled from her form

And reflected the gold sheen

Of soft tresses swaying about her shoulders

And melting into folds of white robes

Billowing sails in the mantle of night

 

Fear gripped your heart for

Dahut, Princess of Ys, had surely come to drag

Your ankles beneath the brine of the sea

To draw the breath from your lungs

A  kiss reserved only for her lovers

Yet you were no knight cloaked in red -
Devil!

 

Nearing you, the smell of the four winds

Carried and spilled over you

Blue, green, red, yellow, a spectrum of colors

In the dark bore the scent, noticing

Behind her slight form

The flex of swan’s wings that stirred you

From an earthly comatose

An angel came to you!

Speaking from lips, red poinsettias

To ask,

“Trust me.”

 

Mothers have spoken for centuries

Of the two present at Birth

Guardians, and she was, surely, incarnated!

Sent by the father you never cared to know

To lay bare your heresy

 

There is but a breath between your noses! Enveloping

arms carved of porcelain, drawn to her chest

the Heart could barely contain itself as it grew

Perhaps Raphael, most beautiful of Seraphim?

Having lost four wings, sacrificed

To heal other angels.

 

Feet lifted off the sand

Bracing against her fair grasp you said

“Put me down!”

 

It wasn’t because the beating

Of this angel’s fleshy heart didn’t appeal

To your delight in carnal idols

But you were afraid

 

An angel's touch reduces one

To ash, in a bout of sacrificial fire

Leaving you smoldering, gasping

Worse than being dragged

Beneath the salty brine

 

Admitting your fears,

As the Universe churned

In eyes alight with mists of nameless galaxies

And a smile that saw the dawn

And arms that squeezed you tighter, she promised

“I’ll never let you go.”

 

So you flew high above city lights

Burning beneath you, stars in the heavens

You flew over the Caucus mountains and pulled up

Your legs, afraid you’d scrape the top

She showed you the mal-tempered sea, where daybreak

Became trapped in scarlet waves

Bordering sacred lands

Where meadows danced with flowers

 

Religion was never your own

And your mother’s words were drowned

By dreams of walking along the coasts

Of Brittany and imagining long-lost ships

Skimming the horizon

 

But here you were ready to make

This angel your God and fall to your knees

Unmoving as Saints in prayer are unmoving

In worship of the ideal, here

 

Many nights spent flying, cool arms

Around your back, yet this night in her eyes

was a Kingdom far away, she’s gone there

Almost forgetting you in her grasp

 

There, as she feasts on ambrosia in aether

Halls, you descend toward earth, dipping low

Headed for pale sands with roots springing upwards

Groves of trees sprouting towards the stars

 

Fingers curl into her supple garments

A panic locking each joint

As she flies too low

Cyparissus, kissed by Sun,

Reaching up for the soft pelt

Of his stag, only to grasp the angel’s wing

Caught, on the stray branch

Of a cypress tree

 

Plummeting, she lets you go!

Spiraling towards the soil, landing you lift your head

A silhouette, framed in the night

Rises from a cloud of settling Earth

The last wing stretched toward the heavens

 

Following streaks of crimson in the sand

You find yourself at her feet, where it pools

Picking white feathers out of torn skin

Brushing matted gilded locks over one shoulder

Kissing as though your lips could numb

 

Instead she draws the dagger at your hip

Never having cause to be drawn from its sheath -

It runs softly along her shoulder blade

Straining to hear, the wet plod

The final wing finds its tomb in the sand

A faint bell chiming in a tiny chapel

Inside a box of cotton

 

Who among the angel's hierarchies will take her now! The celestial gaze is gone, a veil pulled off her eyes and she can only see now what is directly in front of them. As you take her hand, she draws away, into a shell of her own human frailty. Just as you thought

 

You could be grounded together

At last

She shuffles her own path through the sand

Disturbing the grains as she comes to the nearest dune,

White against white, only the backdrop of darkness

Casts her vision unto you

 

With lips of withered poinsettias she whispers, forgetting which

Of a million tongues

Can please your ears, speaking

the only words you will remember

“Aeternum vale”

 

And you aren’t certain what it means.

 

 

 

Cover photo: Night Coast by SSGlushakov