Angel

I saw an angel on the cargo ferry
Going back to the mainland
In the opposte direction of mine.
You'd been dead over nine months
By high summer, and grief
Moved into term from gestation.
I was coming back to the island that evening
In a light misty rain
As The Islander docked
In Vineyard Haven
I glanced across the Sunday night crowd
To find an angel among them.
The angel was seven feet, tall as a Gothic spire
A white robe with wings folded
Facing away from the open water
Sitting where no passengers were allowed
On the deck of the vehicles only ferry.

Why was an angel
Leaving the island?
Going back to the city, to work, to Monday
As if the angel had been on vacation.
Every night after you died
Our daughter asked me if I'd seen an angel
She saw them crowded thick in the room like moths
One that looked like you standing on a telephone wire.
"All you have to do is believe," she'd say
She was so happy when I told her my secret
"See any more you-know-whats?" she'd ask.
Now the season has turned towards winter
I've left the island
With its deer and goldenrod
Its hightide of beach plums
Where wind cuts like a razor clam.
Summer is gone, the placenta
That nourished you—ghost—
Is withering
You can't be born
Nor can you die again.
My daughter says she no longer
Sees angels
She told me: "the angels
Are gone
Because we are better
But they'll come if we need them:
The Angel of Hope
The Angel of Change." 

© Miriam Sagan