is a felt angel
and there’s a bell hanging
from its feet
and even though I kind of hate
fake angels I hang it
on my bedroom wall
above the heater and when
I lean there for heat I ring
the bell by mistake because my back
or shoulder touches it and
it seems to startle up
a moment of pause, a kind of suspension
brief as a wingbeat. Call it
cartoon   draft     scale model
call it plastico. The thing that starts
the thing that represents.

I bought the felt angel
for someone else. It was Christmas
and the angel was a kind of joke
with vulnerable attached (the bell)—
a felt thing I didn’t send
because of all the ways I don’t
and can’t seem to.

How the accidental bell shakes things up –
hope and. Oh maybe just that. Hope really,
and stillness. A kind of presence. Two thrushes
on a bare but budding branch
outside my window. Their whipping glances in here
like very old artists who, I’ve noticed, kind of look around
like birds, quickly and deeply, seeing
beneath the surface to what is veiled –
a bare shoulder inside your shoulder,
a child in black and white across your chest. A burnished sun
rising from your head. All the bodies and compositions that intersect
and breech the borders of your body, what’s deep and what’s depicted.
The tears on the fold line. The black holes.
The hands in the cracked bowl, making the kind of bread
you love.