High Up, Past the Pines

Found an angel on the wayside
today. Face up, wings crushed beneath
it. Not like you’d expect: no blood
anywhere, featherless, and not
male or female that I could tell.
Dead, I think. The gaze empty,
the body cold. Why here, I thought,
so high up, so far past the pines,
past where anyone goes? What rant
or warning or report, and for
whom? I lay down beside it:
the only way I could think of
for finding out. I just got cold,
though, and emptier, leached
of my human learning by moss
and longing and other hungers.

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