Poetry: Obsolete Angel

“Obsolete Angel”
by Renee Ashley
from The Various Reasons of Light

“ This one can’t fly: he’s got
   stubby wings, he’s old
as space or time; he’s gone
   to fat. And now he even
disregards the omens that he never
   should have learned to read
at all: blistered skies,
   the sticky secrets
in the bowels of toads.
   He’s used up his store
of magic, he’s half-blind,
   but he’s crusty
as good bread and willing:
   in the moonlight,
he struggles up the shadows
   towards god, hears
the wheezing orchestration
   of embodied lives
– he always sings low
   his one hoarse note,
always tumbles down to where
   we save him again
and again he falls
   like a hailstone
from some heaven
   and we will save him.”

I’m in an odd mood tonight.