Angel, they

 

say you are made of clouds, they say

you are made of feathers,

 

they say you are everywhere

or nowhere

 

but we know you are both. Our flight

is delayed, this airport

 

another nowhere, if this

 

is your final destination, the air

murmurs, if a stranger

 

or anyone you do not know well

offers you anything . . .

 

but how well & what’s he

offering & is this our final

 

destination? At the hotel (The Boca

(mouth?) Raton (rat?)

 

Plaza) we are handed the key

to room three one three—home

 

for a week or so. On the lobby

tv a woman who was once apparently

 

enormous holds her old jeans up to her

body & smiles. Neil Diamond sings

 

& when I go into the bathroom

he follows me—everybody has one. Paradise

 

is cloudless, they say, impossible

 

to know. Yesterday

a man was sucked into the earth as he

 

slept—a sinkhole opened below his

bed. Not even his brother

 

could save him. In the restaurant (Our

Place) my daughter orders corn flakes,

 

the waiter says they have no

 

corn flakes, points to the raisin

bran. Okay? Okay. It comes with a

 

pitcher of milk, she pours

nearly all of it into her bowl,

 

until I stop her she will keep on

pouring. Three more

 

tvs are screwed to the wall above us—

 

a car goes round & round, a baseball is

thrown, a man slams his racket to

 

the clay. My daughter

 

pushes her bowl away,

picks two packets of jelly from the basket

 

one purple, one red, she

pulls the plastic off one, then

 

the other, lifts each to her tongue—red,

then purple. The wallpaper is trees, or

 

the texture of trees, a landscape seen

from above, a contour map of an unnamed

 

mountain, people wandering across

the face of it—between the trees, a map

 

of silence. If we were closer

we could tell river from

 

leaf, mountain from shadow, a fire making—

unmaking—itself, unless the red is nothing

 

but iron in the soil, unless each rock has

been pulled from the furnace &

 

pounded into a ladder, unless the trees

are simply nails. What is this strand of DNA

 

between us, unconnected to & of

 

the shadows parading past, our outlines

already chalked onto the earth? Angel, you

 

pour your body (red, purple) into your

white coffins,

 

you pull the plastic sheet tight—Angel,

how do you live inside them, how

 

do you wait? I live on air &

light, I drag my daughter every-

 

where, this morning she

muttered Federer, Federer, Federer

 

like a spell & it was as if he

stood before us again, his perfect red

 

jersey. Florida—

 

sinkhole, gasoline, cicada—how many

mornings did I swivel on the red stool at

 

the supermarket lunch counter, the

aisles dark & empty

 

behind me, my mother in back extruding donuts

while I twirled or wandered or made toast

 

& the basket of butter & jelly, each

in its little wasteful tub, impervious to air

 

or time or decay. Angel of Strawberry,

Angel of Grape, your purple body

 

not only fills these coffins

 

but takes the shape of the coffin—emptiness

made whole,

 

color now a shape, your whole being

fit into a block—a block,

 

a brick, a book. Angel, the sun

not yet up, my mother

 

bundled me into the car still

sleeping. Angel,

 

my daughter now wants only you

she asks for the whole basket, she pulls

 

back the sheet, puts her tongue in—

strawberry is her favorite, because it tastes

 

like strawberry.