Antony Dunn
Wrestling With Angels
The way he tapped wafers of cuttlefish
with propitiatory fingers
into the backyard aviary
was the way he cleaned the stained glass windows;
his focus falling far beyond
the budgerigar colours. So.
Perhaps some annunciation of light
quickening the still life of glass
surprised him like fox-fluttered wings,
but his wife was looking the other way
and he can’t recall. The neighbours
are calling it a miracle:
how he hammered his palms against the lead
and balanced his ladder upright
for a moment - then the slow curve.
Transfigured, arms ablaze with coloured plumes,
he wrestled a night-long angel
down the up-rushing rungs of light.
But his wife didn’t see how he came to rest —
his arms spread across the altar,
his gaze rolling the roof away —
how he stood up, walked with his hip knocked out
and came home the same man, the world
flapping and squawking around him.
In the backyard he drops seeds through the bars,
stares through the golds and greens of birds.
Doesn’t like to talk about it.
And he wears the colours of his one bruise
lightly, as if they were nothing
but a buffet from a bright wing.
Page(s) 84
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