On my desk, I found a pin
standing on end.
I can’t say I know
where it came from,
but I know about the angels.
On the heads of pins, there are
hundreds of angels, maybe millions—
who knows how many, but they are there.
Why angels gather, in vast
multitudes, on the heads of pins,
I cannot say. I know this, though,
when you have enough beings,
especially those with wings,
then games ensue—
and tag is the favorite game of angels.
They fly through the air, swooping
toward each other, delighting
in the freedom and the sheer speed
their glowing wings produce.
Their feathers begin to emit tiny flames
with thin trails of white smoke
while they speed along,
at speeds that defy physics,
at speeds that blur humans eyes,
at the speed of angels—
a wonder to behold,
and their laughter
rings pure,
so beautifully innocently-pure—
so pure that hearing it brings unguarded tears.
— OOO —
Even angels begin their games
with the choosing—after all,
in tag, someone must be “it”—and so
they stretch out their pale angelic-legs,
stacking their sandals like cordwood,
singing “Eenie meenie miney moe.”
One by one they are dismissed. It can take years
for the choosing to finish, but angels
have no use for time, and they delight in all of it.
At last, when there is but one angel left,
the one who is “it,”
there is a massive eruption of wings.
They blast into the air
looking like white, glowing, flaming, smoking locusts
swarming
in some blurry cloud of madness
only they can understand,
and in the cloud a chorus rises,
a chorus of laughing angels,
a chorus that makes God smile,
a chorus that brings unguarded tears.
- Glenn Lyvers