Hubble Photo for a Sunday Morning

<


Photographing Angels

for Lilo Raymond


The first angel you brought us stands high
over a city which does not appear in the picture,
yet no one who sees the angel doubts
the city is there. He folds his arms,
swathed in stone, and turns his blank gaze to heaven.
His hair seems newly hatched, snaky curls,
his wings chunky as bread, the feathers cast
from a mold like a big cookie.
When he clarified himself in your darkroom,
you saw what the lens did not show you:
a fly perched on an angels's head.

The second angel you brought us slumps
on a wall by a dump which does not appear in the picture.
Broken from the start, she will never be whole
except in the eye of the beholder
who praises the mosaic painter's art,
through bricks and cement cake
the hem of her robe like a scab. Her head on her hand,
her eyes closed, her wings ashen, she drags her dark torch
on the ground like a broken umbrella.
She has sunk so far into herself not even you
could bring her to brightness,
though you brought her out of hiding.
Those years you photographed white curtains blowing
in white rooms over beds rumpled like ice floes,
you were honing your eye for what might dwell
in space as pure and simple as an egg.

The third angel you gave us holds a rose
so lightly it must have grown in a bed
where each rose chooses the hand that plucks it
and turns its open gaze on what rises and sets,
like a camera gathering the souls of pears,
the piety of eggs, the light in a dark room. Angels.

--NANCY WILLARD