The Angels of the Bottom Land

“I think I’ll live in Arkansas, till the angels make it known, if my heart can stop its beating, and give me reason to go home’, Says the frail and little woman between her sisters on the porch. As if an answer to the statement, or a question that had no start. A rumble sounds in distant heavens. Could be a storm or the cherubim of the ark. “They could be moving in the bottom, near the tombs onto the right”, says the younger of the sisters, a nervous strain fills her eyes. In a chorus of trio moving, the three heads turn to look away, at the small family cemetery in the meadow oft halfway in their sight.

The sisters sit immobile in the slight evening breeze, the whining of a porch chain, rhymes to the tapping of the eldest feet. The meadow out before them, surrounded by Elm Branch Creek. Bubbling from some deep vale in the darkness beneath old seas. The June bugs sing of summer, the battle of the heat, beneath a nearby Elm tree, a shadow moves its feet. If time were not temperamental. In glades of simple green. Then the grass beyond the front porch would have seen Eden’s dreams. “Could be time for evening cobbler”, says the youngest sister fair, “I know it’s well before dinner, but somehow I don’t really care”. A low cloud moves like a curtain. Open to a late afternoon light blue sky. “There is an early moon brewing”, says the oldest sister with a sigh.

So, the three watch the meadow. They peer out carefully. Three in one they know what is there, and they observe the shimmer leave. “Would that be a man a standing by that old Elm tree”, says the youngest sister to no one listening, for one of them can’t breathe. The heat has turned and moved the shadow out near the cemetery, and the two watch one retrieved. The sky turns on a second to winter and then by the sun it’s seized. The phantom takes a soul on forever, and a spirit is received. Gently so tenderly the eldest sister controls a sneeze, turning she pats her middle sister upon her stiffing knee. “Comfort dear, we saw you flying, and soon we will be along, but first your younger sister and I are going to have some cobbler, it’s calling us with its song. – 05.20.2018 – דָּנִיֵּאל