ANGEL

Angel

Every blade of grass
has its angel
bending over it,
whispering: grow, grow.*

And you, planted
on this planet,
trying to thrive,
what do you know, know?

Only a whisper of wings
spinning wind
through your ears
as you go, go.

*The Talmud

Crack

He awoke to the crack of something.
Was it dawn? The sky looked to be

lightening, after a fashion. A bit.

Perhaps. Or was this one of those

false dawns he’d heard about. But

never seen. Scarcely seen any true

ones for that matter. So how would

he know to tell one from the other?

And what were they to him anyway

—either one—but words. Concepts.

Designations. And what of the crack

itself? Had he ever heard a dawn crack?

No. So how to recognize the sound any

more than the sight? Yet the fact remained:

something seemed to have cracked. Perhaps.

Anyway, he’d awoken. Or had he? Maybe

it was he who’d cracked, and not the dawn.

But why would he? Was he so fragile as that?

No. Well, up till now anyway. But had that

changed? Had he? Had the dawn--if that’s

what it was? No. Same feeble light-like

tincture to the air around him. If that was

air around him. If it was indeed him the air

was around, the light, the . . . dawn. Or a

dream of dawn perhaps, dreamt in the dark.

Such ironies were not, he thought , beyond

him, not quite yet. Exhausted by all this . . .

dare he call it thinking, he sank down into

the bed, eyes shut. But the shifting weight

strained the frame and a noise—Could he

call it a crack? He could—sounded down

below. He sighed and rolled up tight against

the wall. In case his dreams to come should

be worse than this. In case of any tossing,

turning he’d be a bit less likely, positioned so,
to roll and fall like Humpty Dumpty not from
a wall but a bed. If he wasn’t just dreaming
himself abed. If it wasn’t all just light
seeping from a crack inside his head.

Premonition at 3 A.M.

A gust of wind stirs bamboo leaves awake.
A crescent moon illumines his dull fate.

In time to come (it could be in this bed)
he’ll breathe in, but not out again. Be dead.

Then gradually grow pallid, stiffen, cool,
wearing the mask of wise old man or fool.

Is there a difference? Once he thought he knew.
Now, sure of less and less, he has no clue.

The wind calms. Inside, outside all is still.
And yet he knows the world goes on. And will.

A child, he lay in wonder while the night
enwombed a future not yet come to light.

What future’s left? A world beyond this one?
One thing’s for certain: someday he’ll be gone.

John Menaghan has published four books with Salmon Poetry: All the Money in the World (1999), She Alone (2006), What Vanishes (2009), and Here and Gone (2014). A fifth volume is forthcoming from Salmon in 2025. In The Hudson Review, David Mason called She Alone "one of the best books of 2006," containing "fifty-odd lyrics, each in a different form, each handled with unobtrusive panache," "poetry with a human center," "smart and affecting," "utterly original," and "a book in which style and substance harmonize." Winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize and a four-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize, Menaghan has published poems in various journals, including Ambit, Pratik, The Hopkins Review, Poetry Ireland, Revival, The Cuirt Journal, Brilliant Corners, American Arts Quarterly, nth position, Atlanta Review, The Adirondack Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Occident, California Quarterly, and Jerry Jazz Review. Menaghan has given poetry readings in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Hungary, Canada, and across the U.S. from New York to Honolulu. Several of his short plays have been produced in Los Angeles, and one in Omaha.