Manna

Is this how it ends?
With nothing but human love learned on streets,
and learned then only
to tap the soul where love’s human milk flows,
then find an island
to practice the art of human kindness.
No, it does not end,
this unquenchable need to be human.

The little whore Angel, his only love,
she who harbored him when he was dying,
levitates before navigating clouds,
but no Icarus she, keeping the sun
high above. Better than riding ferries.
Light on the Needle to search out lost souls.

In the city Angel works the magic
Beasley taught her, himself reader of books
who fancies himself a writer of them.
There is manna between her folding wings.
It is root and seed of No Man’s Island
sent to the city to flower and bloom.

How new love begins:
bread on the plate, parceling the vino
in an open theater where voices
are their own horns and keys making music,
sanctuary of venery and lust
igniting hearts Angel stirs with her own.

There is a tree planted in the garden
and already flourishing when she leaves
the city. There are stories she learned there
she will tell now as though she were a child.

(29 April 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander