It’s not as if animals can’t have wings
or that angels never indulge in fling.
Bats and squirrels embark on brave flight;
men see angels in the midst of the fight.

If angels can truly, jewelry couple
and animals so perfectly can people
the startled moments of the black night
then, perhaps, we won’t embarrass the light

With our shadowy, convoluted forms
our tugging the slithering earthworm
from its rightful home, our desperate
deliberations on what remains disparate.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.