A poem by Bev Brazier
I’ve always wondered what it might feel like to be spring
I was forty years old before I learned
that angels bite.
I’d felt nibbles in the past, it’s true;
noticed tiny teeth marks on my skin
and my soul
but – blinded by medieval art and dollar store figurines
I didn’t see what – or who – was right there, as close as skin…
nipping, increasingly irritated by my inattention.
Chomping, even
at the bit of me still able to conceive
receive
perceive
retrieve
believe
and all the other Eves who sometimes escape my notice
Gnawing at the apples and the boundaries of who I think I am
and what is possible.
I’d swat them away
apply whatever salve came readily to hand
and, elbows out, blunder on through the speckled seasons of my life.
Salve. Slave.
It all depends on where you put the damn letters.
We’ve recently survived a mail strike,
when it was anyone’s guess
but the letters turned up again; fallen into their intended place
teeth marks at the corners but intact.
Don’t be afraid they say; don’t be afraid.
Whatever is going on … be sure: the opposite is also true.
More recently,
I’ve caught glimpses as they bob and weave,
duck
and, grinning,
come at me again with tiny teeth and persistent, knowing smiles.
They get that a lot, apparently.
And it’s cost me the length of a season to admit to their intent.
Sometimes they swarm;
the air thick with them.
Get caught in my hair
Relieved that they’ve caught my attention at last,
able to rest their aching jaws,
they dance.
When you know what it is, it’s a relief in a way
and I almost enjoy the sound as they crunch away at convention
Their wings and robes, constant motion in that crazy circle dance
create an updraft that frequently takes my breath, and the rest of me, with it;
and in that upward motion
turning me inside out
like a shirt grabbed by the hem
and lifted quickly over the head.
I stand, blinking with my insides out.
“The outside is the inside” they whisper as the dance goes ’round.
“Glory to God in the Highest. Don’t be afraid.”
That, at least, is familiar, and I take a step or two in time, and begin to follow the dance
Then, maddeningly, the next chorus begins
and they change the rhythm, tripping off in the opposite direction
winking over their shoulders, and singing
“The opposite is always true.”
They dance then in the opposite direction,
smile at my bewilderment
and sharpen their teeth ready to begin again.
“The opposite is always true”
“The outside is the inside”
That’s the core of it – when everything else has been chewed away, the core remains.
The core.
The refrain of the song, and what’s left behind after they bite.
Angel spit.
ANGELS OF SPRING
I’ve always wondered what it might feel like to be spring
Everyone loving you, but not for yourself.
You know?
Not for yourself.
You’re the messenger, you’re the John the Baptist to the anticipated summer of your cousin.
A proclamation in green and brown and growing light; mud and tender new growth
giving way to the daffodils, trumpeting that something better is on the way.
A gaudy but finally insubstantial pageant
The real stuff is yet to come.
I wonder if angels ever feel that way.
The angels of spring, however,
Newly emerging from the smelly dens in which they’ve sheltered intermittently through the deepest cold
Airing out their wings, are ravenous, and don’t give a flying…
thought… to these things.
Nuance is for another season. Springtime….
Of all the seasons, springtime is the angelest.
