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THE LABORS OF ANGELS
Plucking our meager treasures, grain
by grain, we disregard celestial messengers
to our jeopardy.
Sexless and muscular, angels
must wrestle, pitting light against
sinew and darkness. They arrive
without notice, blazing, terrifying us
with good news.
Barren or virgin
we bear our improbable children
and angels raise heaven like a song.
Still, angels can weep;
in your mind's eye, see
their clear, mineral tears.
Against the indigo sky,
where judgment pulses
like an aneurysm, sunlight spins
its horizontal threads across the field until
the yellows in the standing wheat stalks
match the low light. Harvester angels
cast huge wings of shadow,
scything a crop, lifting it
from the skin of an acre
like fleece from a sheep's flank.
It is only later that they delicately
unhook teasel, thistle, burdock
from the heavy gold grain.
Luci Shaw
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