Thinking of angels

Oh, do not try to make it ordinary
or even think of credibility -
this visitation by the angel
or many
to shepherds in their freezing fields
or Mary -
no: I see hosts of snowy wings
descending in impossible sweeps
of power, I see
faces taut and gleaming, and those
piercing eyes that penetrate the soul
so that breath fails, and when it
passes there remains a vacuum -
and perhaps just a single
                                          shining
                                                       feather.


©C.M.M. 12/11

Dedicated to the choir of St Thomas, Fifth Avenue, for their singing of A Babe is Born (Matthias)

Annunciation and burial

Funeral on Lady Day

for Neil McKellar

A bird is singing

in the tall trees

over and over the same

liquid notes spilling over

the dug earth. A requiem,

perhaps, for the soul that is

gone into the sunlit morning.

Quiet words. Dust. The green

of the grass of this spring

surrounds the stones

as an old man is taken

home and the angel announces

to the startled girl

that a new life will come and be

God and the bird is joined

by all his fellows in a

sudden chorus of pure joy.

C.M.M. 25 March 2011