Gabriel

His wings are cumbersome. They root him

to the sky. He hates the way they fill

with wind, catching updrafts, just as the hum

from an open, twilit window becomes intelligible:

How was your day, dear? More potatoes?

You'll eat those carrots if you want dessert.

All clanking forks, another human day goes

down to darkness. His absence-of-a-heart,

rib-prisoned intelligence, longs to beat.

Holy silence, perfect and cavernous,

throbs for what would kill it:

the unmemorable, mortal everydayness

he's locked outside. Eternity in hand,

the angel listens, braced against the wind.

SALLY THOMAS*

* Sally Thomas has published verse in The New Yorker, The New Republic, First Things, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Cambridge, England.

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Spring 2002
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