Sunlight
gleefully gleaming
off the hunched stone back
of an angel -
forever
frozen in time.
His cold eyes
watch little children
run
and
play.
He would have preferred to
have presided over gravestones -
they never laugh
except
when the rain meanders over
their faces making them fade away.
The old stone
angel -
he is
forever held in place -
wings
arched
not
in glory but in eternal pain.
Amateur
photographers play
with the idea of light
carving
out
his silhouette from the bright blue clouds.
The
clouds
preen and play with the sun’s rays
pretending its summer.
He spies a
flash of colour in a birds’ eyes -
the winter winds have abducted
a
balloon.
They send it floating overhead
but
for once
he is
not amused.
He hears a deep, resounding bark -
a young man’s watch reflects
a
monstrous beast
cavorting on a nearby hill -
its owner watching it, pleased –
Our
angel sighs
There is very
little that he has not seen.
He wonders
if he
should finally humour
the flirtations of the breeze.
But then – out
of the corner of his
eye
he spies
not
sound but silence
not
movement but
stillness.
A person
standing
on the
periphery
of the duckpond.
Her eyes are sadder than his.
He feels a
wave building -
it starts where she stands
strengthening and escalating;
amplifying and intensifying till at last
It reaches him
and his old stone eyes, his
antiquated might -
is
paralyzed
rendered
utterly
immovable
like never before.
H i s
e y e s
g la z
e
o
v e r
And then
he hears a boy laughing
and
kicking
a ball
he suddenly can see -
with
disturbing clarity/lucidity -
a few juveniles partaking of
alcohol.
It is as if
nothing
strange
had ever happened.
And
the girl
the girl
the girl
He never saw her again.