Angels

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Angels all around us, if you buy into such things.
Messengers, I picture them as muscled soldiers,
brilliant in reflected glory (not obligatory are the
oft-depicted harp or wings), trumpets blown as
call to war, dispatched into our gravity to warn,
deflect, proclaim, correct, too rarely intervene on pretty,
shining, fallen planet Earth where our depravity
must make them blush and weep and gnash their
teeth ( assuming that they have them). If there are
angels who are guardians for each of us, there's one
with whom I have a bone to pick, caught sleeping
on the job some years ago. Or is my lack of understanding
more the issue - this angel I would like to question may, in fact,
have saved my son from worse than death, much worse
than sixteen happy years and then a welcome to the other side.
But do we ever get to meet our angels, maybe in disguise? Perhaps.
They might despise the costumes of such fragile skin,
thin skeleton, and woven cloth, be anxious to resume
the purity of holiness, much light. You'd never know
unless an angel comes to visit, with those necessary
words from all accounts: Fear not. We wouldn't
hide from cherubs like those hanging from the Christmas
tree, but soldiers from the Lord's celestial army?
I'm just glad they're on our side. More to the point,
I want to stay on theirs.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2013