I.  M E E T I N G   T H E   A N G E L

Encounter

At the start of the last

of the boy's long dying I asked

except the dog

that moved to another room

did anyone else discern

a presence as if in corners

confusing shadows and light

no interloper

a presence as if rightfully there

expectant and knowing

did no one else obliquely see

however I turned and turned my head

I could not find the eyes

threat or promise

but took the presence to my bed at last

and that was rest

Promise

then could not remember

why we make death such a stranger

the light on a city once home

is never foreign however distant

and it seemed remarkable that anyone

number degrees of illumination to find

where light starts to be shadow

or that I would have ever

turned aside from any of the thousand

doors death has to let life out of bounds

Daughter of absence

S.P., 1932 - 1963

In on the secret now

I see the favored child

in love with daddy's aloof

seducer arrive a third

time at his magnet door

in twenty winters, and finally

stay.

          Do none admire

twenty abstemious (strict

rules apply to those

with living parents and children)

springs but I?

                                   Continue   In Love With the Angel

In Love With The Angel

"I do not go to meet the angel:

our meeting already exists."

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Diane Hatcher Cano