"powder their noses with pollen"
May your lamp be lit today.
May your lamp be lit today. May your morning smell like an orchard of ripe pears. May you hear a tender word from someone you thought was far away.
Angel, Giuseppe Sanmartino, Italian, second half of the 18th century
Angels
by Maurya Simon
Who are without mercy,
Who confide in trumpet flowers,
Who carry loose change in their pockets,
Who dress in black velvet,
Who wince and fidget like bats,
Who balance their haloes on hatracks,
Who watch reruns of famine,
Who powder their noses with pollen,
Who laugh and unleash earthquakes,
Who sidle in and out of our dreams
Like magicians, like childhood friends,
Who practice their smiles like pirates,
Who exercise by walking to Zion,
Who live on the edge of doubt,
Who cause vertigo but ease migraines,
Who weep milky tears when troubled,
Whose night sweats engender the plague,
Who pinion their arms to chandeliers,
Who speak in riddles and slant rhymes,
Who love the weak and foolhardy,
Who lust for unripe persimmons,
Who scavenge the fields for lost souls,
Who hover near lighthouses,
Who pray at railroad crossings,
Who supervise the study of rainbows,
Who cannot blush but try,
Who curl their hair with corkscrews,
Who honeymoon with Orion,
Who are not wise but pure,
Who behave with impious propriety,
Who hourly scour our faces with hope,
Whose own faces glow like radium,
Whom we’ve created in our own form,
Who are without mercy, seek and yearn
To return us like fossilized roses
To the wholeness of our original bloom.
“Angels” by Maurya Simon, from Ghost Orchid (Red Hen Press, 2004)
Creative Invitation
If you were an angel with unlimited powers to comfort and heal, what would you seek to do today? Where would your wings take you?
The angels “seek and yearn / To return us like fossilized roses / To the wholeness of our original bloom.” I love the image of fossilized roses—like the precursor to petrified forests.
Can the things that have fossilized in you turn tender, fragrant and warm again?
What would return you fully to wholeness and bloom?
If the contemplation breaks your heart, let your tears water the fossilized roses. The word of the day is deliquescent: becoming liquid.