I Crashed My Angel – a poem by Dia Calhoun

I Crashed My Angel                  		

Too many times I threw myself
in the teeth of a wolf,
on the axe of a throat-cutter,
off the hurricane cliff of doubt.
Always, last possible breath
in she flew, her blue wings
keep me from falling.

From her feather tips    music, faint
blue as sapphires in a far-off mist
I wanted . . .  what? the longing
fading on the slow, glide down
That last time, like every time,
she set me on the ripe, plowed ground.

Nobody warned me
you can wear out your guardian angel
even unto death.
All that survived      her blue wings
transplanted, sutured with gold
gordian knots on this strange angel
approaching me now.

Grabbing me, she leaps up.
No More Chances. Her wings
drench wind over me, my hair combs
fall and fall and fall. Have you ever risen
in the arms of an angel? What is this lilt,
my skin, this breathless     sapphire
blue notes. Brassy
blare of jazz trumpets.

Open Your Ears. She carries me
higher, past arpeggios of cloud. We burst
into the blue where wind turns song. Where

I am melody. Chords of C major,
that blue running out
into the last summer morning. That B minor
blue of mermaids diving
I am lento, allegro. Fugue of blue.
Enormous, mosaic, my lifetime, each note
a glissando falling
she drops me into music

O Blue, holy broken expanse—

Dia Calhoun is the author of seven young adult novels, including two verse novels, After the River the Sun and Eva of the Farm(Atheneum, 2013, 2012). She has won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award; published poems and essays in The Writer’s Chronicle; EcoTheo Review; The Nashville Review; MORIA Literary Magazine; Grist Journal; And Blue Will Rise Over Yellow: An International Poetry Anthology for Ukraine, and others. She co-founded readergirlz, recipient of The National Book Foundation Innovations in Reading Prize, and taught Creative Writing at Seattle University and Stony Brook University. More at diacalhoun.com.