Fallen Angel
Lynn Strongin

Love (says Jean Moreau) is the fallen angel flying sadly in the background
with razor-sharp accuracy, but pastel colors
hitting the heart. spot-on.

The meadow needs studs to hold it downit floats away in a dream...

Her voice tarnished like old silver,
“Life is so complicated on the surface of earth you’re lucky to find
happiness anywhere.”
I look at her:  in the best of times she hardly smiles,
& this is the worst.
Dropping a shadow,
I watch it open like a flower in water.
Drop another,
it cuts like a knife.


Only a glimmer of hope today:
Thru closed lids
I see autumn’s bears
blackberry stained tongue.

Red light, winter sun
in thin strands spooled off a bobbin.
(Did they ever find the criminal who terrified the city of Novgorod?)

If we don’t get on as well as in the old days,
disorder breaks the heart:
If we weren’t married, we’d seek each other’s company.

I never thought we’d  be dusting off war-maps again:
(during the last war, we lived on a farm where there was a pump with helmet
it hung a bucket in our yard.)

In the park fallen leaves swirl about the bronze infantryman:
he wears a bronze cape.
His cape cannot show blood on the sleeve nor can it ripple in November wind.
“Are you afraid to grow old?”
“What, dear? I am alive!” (says Moreau)
Love, fallen angel, flies sadly in the background.