Soul Work – a poem by John Claiborne Isbell

Soul Work

“You must change your life.”


With day now gathered up and put away –
with every head now pillowed for the night –
with all the planets out in their array,
God’s angels come to Earth, in the soft light

that holiness imposes. You can stray
from faith or innocence to your delight,
to your regret. There’s nothing you can say
to make the angels cease their oversight,

there’s nothing you can do. The angels come
to wrestle with the suffering: the sick,
the sleepless, and the dying. In the thick

of combat, they might touch your heart – that numb
and withered organ. And you may well weep.
Their work is done. You can go back to sleep.

John Claiborne Isbell is a writer and now-retired professor currently living in Paris with his wife Margarita. Their son Aibek lives in California with his wife Stephanie. John’s first book of poetry was Allegro (2018); he also publishes literary criticism, for instance An Outline of Romanticism in the West (2022) and Destins de femmes: Thirty French Writers, 1750-1850 (2023), both available free online, and Women Writers in the Romantic Age (2025). John spent thirty-five years playing Ultimate Frisbee and finds it difficult not to dive for catches any more.