My Angel

Sometime ago, in a place where desperation and loneliness fogged my mind
and insecurity and fear either kept blindness before me or left me short-sighted,
I thought I had stumbled over a flower along the road.

It was just another flower in full bloom.

Of course it was pretty.
But, as I approached it and, with my limited vision, took a great whiff of its fragrance,
I thought I smelled something human – something decent and friendly. 
I smelled something that became more than a scent; something that turned into a feeling
and struck my heart like honey to my lips. 
Suddenly, my eyes were opened and I saw things differently. 
It wasn’t human after all – it was more Angelic than earthly.

That flower became very dear to me and I thought to pluck it.  
With an excitement I had not known, I reached for that flower. 
The moment I touched it, the moment it reached up to allow me, the moment it became mine,
I saw it for what it truly was:  An Angel - my Angel.  Not really mine, not belonging to me,
but there for me; to teach me; to treat me with God’s kindness; to understand me;
to hold my head and lift me out of despair and frustration; to deliver me to sanity; to love (as God loves);
to offer itself to me in holiness and friendship.

And now I see that, actually, my Angel plucked me –
for I was the weed growing (dying, actually) along the side of the road. 
And, God had sent this Angel to stumble over me.  It was sent to find me.

The assignment was easy:  Convince the weed that it is a flower.

My Angel does it well.  It has helped transform me with special words and its smiling countenance. 
I have discovered with my Angel’s help that I am not a weed, I am a flower under the care of an Angel. 
I am sweet. I am beautiful.  I am fragrant.  I bring happiness to people.

Maybe, just maybe, I am an Angel, too.  At least my Angel makes me feel that way.

Most people never get to see their Angels – even though they are always there – all around. 
I am one of the blessed ones.  My Angel has come to me. 
My Angel has been assigned to work with me (as if not really an Angel at all). 
The daily responsibilities of being my Angel come so naturally that
it would be easy to deny even being my Angel. 
Just my friend, my Angel would say. 
But, no, I have an Angel.

I love my Angel. 
It wants (allows me) to treat it like a human. 
But, I don’t do it very well, because I choose to treat my Angel like an Angel.
Which it is!

·         

One day, the sun came out to see how the two of us were doing – my Angel and me. 
This sun was stronger than any other sun had been before. 
I thought it would bring a brighter day.  But, it brought pain. 
It scorched everything.  Its purpose was to burn away everything that could be burned.
It purged the color from everything I saw and knew. 
My days were again darkened by the intensity of the burning sun. 
I hid my eyes. 
I screamed in pain and fear - - - and waited.

When I could open my eyes I was blind again.  And my Angel was gone. 
I began reaching, grasping, hoping to touch or smell anything familiar. 
I found my way back to the path where I had first found my Angel. 
When my Angel could not be found, I looked for the flower – perhaps, it had been a dream about the Angel. 
Perhaps the flower would at least still be there.   
My flower was gone.  My Angel was gone. 

Then, my eyes were opened again and I could see that my own ugliness had returned. 
I wilted and wasted away hopelessly along the side of the road.

The sun had taught me a lesson – but, I had not learned it. 
Angels should be treated like flowers – delicate but temporary.  They don’t have their own minds. 
They can run and hurt and, my worst fear coming to pass, they are like the wind. 
Don’t try to keep an Angel – they will not be kept.

Perhaps, one day, as I droop here, dreaming and dying, perhaps that Angel will come back to me
and carry me beyond the sun – or, as it may turn out, drive me deeper down into the blackness of the place
where false Angels themselves are, perhaps through no fault of their own, doomed to lay.

Most people never get to see their Angels – even though they are always there – all around. 
I was one of the blessed ones.  My Angel had come to me. 

* 

But, although I was told that I would always have an Angel by my side,
I find that an Angel cannot, and should not, promise such things. 
Dare I, as I droop in bitter disappointment, expect that this nightmare has been the dream
and that my Angel will soon wake me with a new wave of excitement – and reality?

Still, it has been a long season and the wind does not blow in my favor these days. 
And, apparently, Angels are in great demand. 
There must not be enough to go around because I have only seen one.

I wish I could be an Angel again.

One evening, as the sun was removing itself on that horizon that I can not reach to follow,
an uncommon darkness settled under me. 
I could not even look up for the shining of the secondary light that is cast by the sun’s attempt to hide from us. 
But, that weaker light was gone.  How long had I been drooping there,
no longer waiting for that slow warming of a promised tomorrow. 
I assumed that the sun would come back around sooner or later. 
But, now it was later.  And, later had come and gone just as that day – only not to return. 
My thoughts were piercing and the pain of them was unrelenting, sorrowful, pitiful – eternal.

In the darkness, I felt the kicking of some other kind of blindness. 
Without success, I tried to see who was kicking me. 
I was too weak to reach out to catch the perpetrator, but I did have the strength to touch my bruises. 
Lord, how many kicks had I received?  The roadside smelled of dust that had been disturbed by a moment. 
How many moments?  My neck, stretched into a painful bending over,
burdened by the heaviness of my despair, was nearly to snap. 
Dryness was seeping up from my roots and had invaded all but my thoughts. 
Those thoughts stayed strong – and, weak! 
Too weak to shake away the residue of seeds that needed to be planted, I prepared to die. 
But, my thoughts, my despair, would not let me.  This new darkness was Hell! 

Hell was kicking me.  The sun had abandoned me.  My Angel was no longer by my side. 
Darkness itself, with its shadows of hope, was nowhere to be seen. 
Breathless now, my head burst open. 
It was like blood pouring like a flood from the dry shallowness of my existence. 
For the first time throughout this darkness it felt good to let it go. 
Everything was gushing out, I felt it down to my stomach and, when that was empty,
my body heaved and came to life long enough to finish me off from head to toe.

It was over.

·                     

Somewhere during the night a thought came – but, it was not really a thought at all –
it was more like a feeling.  I had felt it before. 
It came the way that a shadow is felt by the mind as something crosses by when your eyes are closed. 
First the gray flash before closed eyes, then the thought that possibly something was there. 
Immediately (and I discovered this as the old thoughts lay before me), I felt good about that shadow. 
Before any other thought was allowed in, I knew this was a good thing.

That thought aroused in me an attempt to open my eyes. 
Could I? 
Hesitating, in faith, I could!

There on the ground beneath and beside me a shadow had been cast. 
I couldn’t help but think that it was God, at first. Then, that “me” who still lived, thought it might be an Angel. 
But, it was my own shadow. 
It was good to see me, if only in the light of this ever present darkness. 
Strength came to me, outside of me, warmly at first, then,
within me from some depth I had not known before.  It was good to be alive.

But, it was still night.  Darkness stared back at me, convincing me that I was still alone in the darkness
and that this was not the promised dawn – the sun hidden half-way around the world by now. 
There was still time – to live or die.

Listen to me, now, because this is the most remarkable part of this story.

On that mid-winter, pre-dawn season of life I lifted my head to thank the moon for its light –
for surely it was to be thanked for coming to my rescue. 
I mustered all the strength I could – strength that returned stronger with each inch that my spirit was lifted. 
Darkness, in shadows, covered the horizon.  The more upright I was lifted the darker the sky. 
How could it be so empty?  Where was the moon? 
And, if the light I had expected to see was nowhere to be seen, where did this shadow come from?

My head drooped down again, not in despair, but in search of my shadow. 
Had I imagined it? 
There it was, darker now as the ground around me was a lighter gray. 
Did you know that “the darker the shadow the brighter the day?” 
Shadow and darkness are friends abandoned by the light that turns them both black
and nearly disappears when the light is directly overhead.  But, there was no sun.  No moon.

But, there was my shadow.  What did it mean? 
I followed the angle from where the shadow was cast to where it might be in the sky. 
I was startled as I turned and lifted my head to find the source. 
A single star shone brightly from more than millions of miles away. 
It had been watching me.

I knew it!  I knew all along it would be true! 
God would not abandon me and leave me without my Angelic caretaker. 
The light from my Angel was warm and shone brighter the longer I looked up to it. 
But, was it drawing nearer or further away? 

Most people never get to see their Angels – even though they are always there – all around. 
I am one of the blessed ones.  Perhaps a billion miles away, my Angel was still shining for me.

·                     

One day I wandered by a small stream along the road.  More like a long puddle, actually.
Of course, I was drawn to it in my dryness.  I longed to soak my feet and rest and reflect. 
As I dangled there leaning over a solid rock I noticed my reflection on the surface
as the ripples faded and the water mirrored. 
It was me, alright.  Times and things had not scarred me as I had thought. 
My reflection found favor with my spirit. 
I thought I would be able to see the burn marks from spending so much time in the bright light of my Angel. 
Not so much harm done as I had assumed. 
Looking good, I thought.  Came through this in good shape, I realized. 

For a brief moment, though, I saw another reflection in the water. 
I couldn’t quite make it out, but it didn’t alarm me as if it were someone behind me,
or some phantom beneath the surface waiting to pull me in. 
It looked like me, a double exposure; a face within a face. 
The surface began to ripple and I saw the tiniest of lights all over the water like the twinkling of the stars above
reflected in the now quiet stream.  It took my mind off of the double reflection for a moment. 

Then, as I looked at myself again, the second image of myself began to separate as if moving away -
behind or above or beneath I could not tell - for a brief second at first
and then it flew away across the shimmering water and disappeared across the narrow stream. 
As it left my face and flickered away across the water it changed from an image of myself
to a light that became smaller and smaller (in an instant, mind you)
until by the time it reached the other side of the stream it was nearly an insignificant pinpoint of light. 
Now, it was gone.  I looked back down at my own reflection and saw only my own innocent face. 
The water had calmed and no reflecting lights remained.

I looked up in the sky only to see one distant star
that neither reflected in the water beneath nor shared the sky with a single other. 

I think my Angel needs me from time to time. 
It must steal a moment without anyone’s notice and must find a way to be near even at such great distance. 
It is always welcome, so I don’t know why it chooses such measures. 
Now, the stream’s reflection begins to ripple again
as the stream running down my cheeks disturbs the water mirror. 
My tears flow and flood the side of the road. 
Finished, I lean back, eyes on the lone-star and kiss the sky.

·                     

What was it about those times that spoke such bitterness into my soul? 
What did those days mean to me that I would live past them – having sworn never to really live again? 
I had trained my spirit to endure so many things!  Why could I not control the times of my Angel? 
Why are those beautiful beings so easily chaffed away and,
the better question, why do they continue to shine from so far away and still cast only a shadow in our presence? 
The weeping seems to go on without regret. 
The emptiness, even in this refreshed, re-surrendered, redirected life cannot be filled even remotely. 
An echo from deep down within that empty place is as clear as the light that is a million miles away. 
And the cry of that emptiness can be heard, I am sure, at least from that far.

Perhaps! 
Perhaps!  (That word is still the key to an existence that reaches back with one hand and reaches upwards with the other.  The two, unfortunate pisces, screaming from the stretching that will forever be tearing them apart and never bringing them back again).

And, yet, there remains a song unable to be song for the tune is lost between the ties that bind two hearts –
one human, one Angelic – one mine, one never to be near again.

One pre-destined to keep diligent watch over one broken Angel.

My memory of my flowering friend and budding Angel (as I have known for awhile that Angels do grow)
has long-since faded into the field of sky where the twinkling stars are caressed and cared for. 
Old pains of seeding in the night have been replaced with joyful relaxing along the road
as I and mine slowly and less carefully trod toward our final bed. 
I am a tough old Angel (having settled finally that I truly am one)
without much use other than to reach out on occasion and touch (or kick) some young flower along the way –
I mean it no harm, but someone has to wake up those depressed ones during their darkest hours. 
I never quite made it to flight, however. 
Perhaps (there’s that word again) some of us are given special ways and some are given special wings. 
My way has been in this direction for so long now –
well, the “perhaps” still thinks that my Angel and I have drifted so far away that we might come full-circle. 
Wouldn’t that be grand!

Some folks never get to see their Angels.  I was one of the blessed ones.  And now I wonder: 
“What marvelous purpose could my Angel have for me these days?”

end of Poem (click here to return to Poetry List Page to read more)- if link is not active, the chapter is not yet ready.  Check back later, please.

Please let me know if you have read (and enjoyed) this chapter by sending me a quick email to:  ehylandmaze@aol.com

bless you.....................................Eugene H. Maze

This chapter and all chapters related to this website book entitled "Poetry" (copyright 1995, 2005) was written and published by Eugene H. Maze.  No portion of this book may be copied, sold or distributed either by electronic or other means in any fashion whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the author.  Permission for distribution may be obtained by contacting the author at ehylandmaze@aol.com.  Links to this and all previous and subsequent pages of this book entitled "Poetry" may be distributed freely without permission.

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