A stained-glass angel
to hang in the window -
my mother made it
in the fourth rehab
in two years, Strecker
maybe or Livingrin.
She was directed by
a therapist, a solid
woman with a brown
bun, a placid, bovine
face. Occupational
Therapy, the doctors
called it, "As if,"
my mother said,
"we would all fly
back to the world
and work joyfully
forging
legions of angels."
Thick lead surrounds
the stained-glass, frozen
as it bubbled and cooled,
trapped in its own
profile: leaden hands,
leaden halo, no face.
She hung it
on fishing line from
the den window,
the body blue, wings
yellow-white. "No
sense of humor at all,
that woman," my mother
said, "I asked if we
could make our angel
red and black and she
answered that she didn't
know how well it would
turn out. The light
wouldn't pass well
through black wings.
Jesus Christ!" She
shook her head,
"Didn't know how well
it would turn out!"
My mother laughed
and looked down
at her hands curled
in her lap. "Read
Milton. Read Paradise
Lost. It turns out
the same way
every goddamned time."
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