When Angels Come
Their first utterance
is always: Do not fear.
They know it’s what we’ll do
upon seeing them,
too bright to be true.
Even when it is good news,
too much makes us cower,
shield ourselves from the gift.
There is something in us
that trembles in the shine
of surprising apparitions, as if
suddenly at the verge of a cliff,
the earth a long way down.
I am reluctant to freefall
into sightings of the miraculous,
even beautiful ones,
conditioned as I am
to rely on solid ground, mistrusting
parachutes that may or may not open,
may or may not exist.
Yet I long for
something glorious
to materialize within this
ordinary room, where sunlight
is so often transient, thin
through the windows.
When angels come, I want
to be bold enough to look
directly at their light, even
as I shake, to recognize
the strange music of their voices
that I used to know
from before memory.
After a lifetime of yearning,
am I strong enough
to bear that devastating sight?
Joanne Esser is the author of the poetry collections Nothing Is Stationary, (Holy Cow! Press, 2026), All We Can Do Is Name Them, Humming At The Dinner Table, and the chapbook I Have Always Wanted Lightning. Recent work appears in Echolocation, I-70 Review, Great Lakes Review, Dunes Review, and Orca, among other journals. She earned an MFA from Hamline University and has been a teacher of young children for over forty years. She lives with her husband in Eagan, Minnesota.
Amethyst Review 