BLACK ANGEL

The wind walks past my window again

wearing a dress of green leaves.

I look up. But no one’s there.

I’m studying

A Field Guide to Wild-

flowers

. I’ve just discovered

the tall, spiky ones on my back

slope, the ones with heads of tiny,

pink, rattler mouths, are woodbane,

and it seems to make a difference.

I’m curing herbs. Rose smell

of pepper. Pepper of fresh basil.

And here in the old root cellar

where I write, one good sentence

makes a difference. And Barber’s

Adagio for Strings

. The opening

of the Boisvallee’s Religioso.

This poem is an adagio. A slow

yearning of winds and strings.

Like the hot August night I got

drunk with friends, and laughing

and sweating, we linked arms and lay

back in the deep wine, the cool

Einstinian space of summer grass,

streaming upward like angels,

past trees, past crumbling eaves

and stars, rising like music father

and father out the closer home.

So I’m checking the rue, the rose-

mary, the sweet marjoram. I’m closing

the book of flowers. All stories

yearn and sing, Rodina Feldevertova,

and that makes a difference.

The parsley will smell of England;

the oregano and basil of Greece;

the rosemary remind us of heaven.

They say you died, mysteriously,

at seventeen, homeward bound

on an Italian liner. Now you stand,

larger than life, over your own grave,

the famous Black Angel of Iowa City,

the iron cape of your wings

spreading its perfect shadow in perfect

sunlight, the right one pointed

upward to protect us, the left

touching the earth, to gather us in.