Shadow Leaping

My best friend portrays her father in verses

as an angel in great distress,

his slashed wing bleeding paternally.

He died in the same year as my father.

I do not think angels are winged,

this is an invention of the past millennia.

But if my father was an angel

then his mouth would be half sewn

and he would nervously grind his teeth,

the paralyzed wing sagging onto his inert foot.

He had mundanely fallen behind

as a limping relative of my own shadow,

his clenched fists imploding under earthen quilt,

and I simply jumped over his shoulder,

my thoughts speaking of him from another world,

exclusively mine.

Poem published in Enchanted Crossroads, anthology edited by The Ontario Poetry Society, June 2006

Copyright ©2005 Luminita Suse

Ottawa, Canada