"Detail from the Altarpiece at Ghent"

(Because I'm in a poetry mood, for whatever inexplicable reason. Do I need a reason?)


The angels
in the corner
crowd this postcard,
ready to fly
wherever the mails
might take them.

They have the scrubbed faces
and the gauzy hair
of my daughter's friends
in high school chorus,
their cupped mouths brimming
with hallelujahs.

Wrapped in the reds
and golds of cherubim
those rough girls too
dreamed about boys,
and when van Eyck was done
grew up and married them

and died. Today I pin
their picture to my wall
where the bronze notes
of the sun's great harp
can strike them
back to song.

-- Linda Pastan