Angel With Silver Wings

Angel With Silver Wings
© Surazeus
2025 09 09

If my foot-shadow treads the broken ground 
with eager curiosity to know 
undulating shape of our puzzling world, 
I may feel fruit tree blossom in my heart 
to offer shelter of empathic joy 
where the broken may find haven to heal. 

Ardith leans against the telephone pole 
and puffs the cigarette with nonchalance 
as wind blows yellow skirt around her knees 
while she watches black cars glide down the street 
that weave around horse-dragon wagons with bales, 
and ignores her intense desire to sing. 

Turning toward airplane hangar in the field, 
Ardith strides straight to the vanishing point 
that gleams at still point of the universe 
bright as absolute zero of the sun 
deep inside flashing core of the white whole 
that spirals into zillions of galaxies. 

Waving to her husband by his airplane, 
Ardith gives him beef steak sandwich and beer, 
so he wipes engine grease of callused hands 
and eats while she sits by him in the wind 
and reads his favorite story from the Bible 
about the shepherd who defeats the tyrant. 

Pressing yellow hat with ribbons and lace 
firm on her head in fierce propeller gusts, 
Ardith waves as Richard soars into clouds, 
and grins as she pictures him in her mind 
as Earendil, angel with silver wings 
who bears the scroll with message for mankind. 

Though stars look very different tonight, 
as Richard flies fragile tin can with wings 
more than ten thousand miles around the Earth, 
he dreams about the hour he will return home 
for Ardith shines as his beacon of hope, 
glowing brightly through gloomy smoke of war. 

After dropping bombs on tank factories 
so sprawling complex of buildings explode 
in scarlet bloom delicate as the rose, 
Richard flies silver plane across the sea 
where the White Ship crashed in the Norman rock 
so William Adelin drowned in state power. 

Old ghosts of her ancestors haunt her steps 
as Ardith walks through the shadowy house 
where her doll with curls rode the oakwood horse, 
so she bakes apple pie she eats alone 
as angel-winged airplane falls from Heaven 
and crashes burning in the howling sea.