CLOUDS 

OF ANGELS 

Poem for Today - Thursday October 2, 2014

OUR LOST ANGELS

Ages ago, clouds brought them near

and rain brought them to our lips;

they swam in every vase, every cupped palm.

We took them into ourselves

and were refreshed.

For those luckier generations, angels

were the sweet, quickening substance

in all light, all water, every morsel of food.

Until the day the sun changed some, as it had,

took them skyward, but thereafter

the clouds failed to restore them.

In time, streams gave up

every spirit, and the sea, unreplenished,

finally became the void we had feared

it would become, the void we had imagined.

And, as now, clouds brought only rain,

and the emptied rain

brought only the chill in which

we must now be wrapped.

© Scott Cairns, pages 152-153

in Upholding Mystery,

An Anthology of Contemporary

Christian Poetry, Edited by

David Impastato,

Oxford University Press,

New York, Oxford, 1997