The Day Before.A Narrative Poem Poem by Daniel Brick

In Thursday, in late morning,
my angel-companion and I took
a slow stroll through a yellow-red
woods. The mood was wonderful, and
you must grasp I have been laughing
everyday, or at least smiling broadly.
A mountain, dislodged from its vertical
splendor, pierces the ground like a mighty
arrow. River-currents swirl in figure-eights
but the blue shining water is stationary.
The foam of waves is tossed into the sky
where it coalesces into graceful cloud-shapes.
Deer speak to each other in a dialect of the forest,
and lions, male and female, rest in their massive
being between feedings. My mind is stumped
by such alien images, but at the same time
it can calculate cosmic equations. I feel
no need for explanations. (Our world exists
in the hinterlands of eternity.)

Three blue-streaked fish plunge
their heads into the air above
the water line. In their bubbly voices,
they encourage me to dive. "Then, we'll
swim the middle depths together, " they
bubble in unison. My companion angel
subtly smiles but shakes his head.
A tiny finch catches my eye. As soon as
our gazes lock, he opens his beak and
wags his tongue, hopping up and down
on his narrow tree branch. I recognize
him as the lone finch who visited
my balcony last summer, and he cocked
his head from side to side as I spoke
of random things that bond bird and human.

My companion angel turns away, and looks
fixedly into the sky dome. I sense this walk
is not the same as the Lord-God walking
in the cool of the evening through Eden,
talking quietly with Adam. I say impulsively,
carelessly, "Tell me your name, my - "
"No, Daniel." Authority is what I hear.
The finch flies away. The fish submerge.
I cannot speak another word, and know
laughter and smiles belong to yesterday.
"It's true I have spoken to you often
as a friend. I admit that and say no more
about it." My heart was sinking. I saw
the lions vanish into the thicket. The deer
ran pell-mell away from me. And high above me,
I watched the cloud-shapes collapse in disarray.
A chill that did not belong to morning in the woods
cut through my frame. "I have foreseen your sorrow.
You will be even more bereft over time. These will
be hard times for you: your sadness will be swamped
by your fears, and nature will not help you again.
No creature, neither animal nor angel, will be able
to comfort you... " In the long pause of his silence,
he shimmered in and out of his angelic shape. He
disappeared completely for a few seconds. Then, he stood
clothed in a glorious nimbus on a mound a distance from me.
The rest of what he said to me was spoken directly
into my interior being. "Another War in Heaven rages
even as we speak. At least three factions of angels
contend in hatred and harm, eviscerating their spiritual
beings. What these warring beings will become,
if anything is left of them, is too terrible to foresee.
I refuse to look ahead. The end will not be long in coming.
Angelic beings are too sensitive for prolonged violence.
The survivors of one great battle have condemned themselves
to everlasting agony and yet they gloat over their victory."
The angel fell silent but still held me in this thought-embrace.
"This crisis may yet pass, angels may yet see the Light
of their being, and cease this second War in Heaven... "
I suddenly found my voice, and cried out, "Angel, Angel,
hear me. You will prevail. Your beauty cannot fail - it is
the being of our being, forever. ANGEL, YOU MUST DISPLAY HOPE."
I felt his touch caress me as he vanished. That very afternoon,
I set about building a Temple of Hope with things of the earth.