For a Moment You Imagine . . .

Antique Glass Paperweight

"The Angel in the Paperweight"

has never been published.

Dates of composition

and revision:

March 18, 2006

September 20, 2006

March 10, 2007

February 2, 2013

The Angel in the Paperweight

James Hart

For a moment you imagine

looking in to see a pair of wings,

a pale angel face above them,

some fault you see in flaring light,

fractures in the glass.

There is no angel.

Like a child, you wish you held

a snow globe instead of this solid crystal

weight, frozen spiral swirls.

Your hand quakes it awake,

tilts the mind’s tiny white church inside.  Shiny

pearl flakes jump and tumble, trapped

in watery sky, their silver blizzard

twinkling in the half light of reason.

What was that stifled whisper you heard

just now?  A memory of your mother

comes to mind:  You’re the child Narcissus

peering into her blue pools.

Her eyebrows rise in surprise, brown wings

arching over visions into distant worlds.

Those two bands of bristling hair

become the bridge to all you’ve lost somewhere

so far off you can’t remember, a rush

of angel air crossing time’s glass abyss.