Angel of death, for fifty years you’ve trotted a white horse up seventeen
office walls. Today I notice tears, running down your cheek. Gift of a friend,
who smoked half his life away with funny cigarettes. If etching makes echoes, even you black angel, might be touched by his sadness. Watching the spasms
of his infant son, “each jerk a petite mort of a two-year-old brain.” Helpless
to stop the slow erosion of what he wishes for his child to achieve—enjoy—
the seizures, are like acid spots that eroded blank plate and created this print. Side-saddle rider, how can you ignore the murky fumes of sorrow?

What undergrowth
of ceaseless regret,
flanks River Styx
lapping quietly
just out of sight?
What pull compels
a stark white horse
to exit into darkness?
Is destiny—doleful,
inexorable, ambling
ahead? A forcefield
dragging fatherhood
away—puff by puff—
like the jolts frying
his son’s mind?
Riding along
this river of tears,
dark angel, do you,
who exult in pain,
irony and despair,
know the mystery
beyond death, where
no thing, no dream,
can stop incoming
convulsions of joy?