Jacob’s Meadow

Your way of putting some distance between us, 

mourning dove, in seemly haste, 

quickstepping (your turtleneck gaze 

craning forward and flexing back 

like a Singer sewing needle) and then 

flustering aloft to the telecommunication line 

and crooning — all of it pleases me.  

Your wings whistle no eerie wail 

but a call to flight, your moan in dove minor 

lures your next mate, and your spirited 

relocation to a level only a little above me 

shadows forth no seraphic transmutation, 

no hereafter species to aspire to, 

nothing more than a song perch.  

And you, angel, you’re no missing rung.  

Look at you!  You’re an evolutionary monstrosity.  

Why were you fitted with arms as well as wings?  

For brandishing a lily?  Flourishing a sword, 

like a right-handed beak?  And those tender feet, 

gracefully adangle or decorously robed, 

what have they ever seized?  Do they walk 

or hop?  Either way, without you 

the great rope ladder of beings would 

collapse all over the place, and all earth’s creatures 

would find themselves on the same footing.  

Which of course they already do.  All but us.  

Earth to Jacob, snap out of it!  

That angel you were grappling with 

in your guilty dream on the banks of the Jabbok?  

That was your brother, Esau.  That starlit ladder?  

The steep oleander riverbank.  

And those departing and arriving messengers?  

Bats homing in on mosquitoes in the meadow 

that had gorged themselves on you.  Yes, bats, 

your remote relations, embracing the afterlight 

with their handsome five-digit wings.