Hinterlands

Versification Publishing House

Forthcoming 2021   

Angels on a Tightrope

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Cast metal angels floated between snow-laden trees

like specters on webs of stretched cables,

involuntary tightrope walkers created by some artist

playing God who had precariously balanced

childhood fantasies on a knife’s edge.

The couple strolled beneath a man-made cosmos

of absurd constellations, their breaths rising

and tangling in wings and icy branches as they looked up

this way and that, but never at one another.

They walked hand-in-hand as if the balancing act

that was their marriage wasn’t about to come crashing

down like a flock of angels pulled to earth

by the weight of an early winter storm.