Another Angel

I found myself bound to Him and bound to His

Bidding. He left water without color and land

With no motion to mention but kept me going

Like a toy wound tighter than His one odd eye

When I failed to deliver a message on time.

He built bugs and beasts; I understood my

Sexlessness. He invented men and women;

I knew I had no father. He never told me

What I was, what He could be. So what—

Two boys in Oil City, Louisiana, complain

About their bodies, featherless, modeled after

The reflection He passes in streams. They got

Sick playing barefoot in mud, and they hate

Their symptoms. I am that kind of pain

Put to purpose but unloved, bound to the Lord—

He looks at those brothers, never noticing his own—

Bound like their strange sister told to bathe them

Once, filthy and feverish, they finally come home.