THE ANGEL BERNARD

A gray row of corrugated huts

hunkering down in rain.

Across the way the fire burns

night and day though unseen

in sunlight. Bernard wakens

to the aroma of warming milk

and burned coffee. Later we’ll say

he had the bearing of an angel

with clear eyes, a wide brow,

thick golden curls. His mother,

home from the night shift,

prepares his day, so he rises

to stand on the cold linoleum.

Ford Rouge, where she works,

goes on burning and banging,

but neither notices. It’s their life.

Nonsense, you say, how can the life

of an angel include a Ford plant

where new life is tortured

into things? You saw the girl Mary

in a rose gown shyly bowing

before a dazzling Gabriel, his pale

wings furled, this in an empty

church in Genoa, the painting stained

but the scene unforgettable: That

was an angel bathed in his own light,

bearing the gift of a God, a presence

from another world. When Bernard

bows to dip bread in his coffee

his mother lays one hand down

on his bare nape as though she knows

he will die eleven years from now

in a fiery crash on US 24 on his way

to Dayton and thus leave his sons

behind. In this world the actual

occurs. In November the rain

streams skyward in cold sheets,

the fires burn unseen, the houses

bear down, separate and scared.