clcouch123

(x = space)

x

x

prose poem about an—

x

–found and read a story about an angel.  A long time ago, I had a book of stories about angels.  As far as I know, I don’t have that book now; and I don’t know where I got it.  I don’t where I was when I read this story.  I seem to recall an institution-like place, a school cafeteria or something, though the light was not widespread and where it was was divided starkly between itself and shadow.  Maybe I’m imagining my imagining of the setting of the story.  This angel looked like a tramp.  He appeared in tattered clothes with a tattered raincoat over all.  He didn’t like where he was or that he had to look and feel this way.  I think he tended not to like his assignments all that much.  In this story, he saved someone; and I think he did this rather often, saving people.  At the moment just before salvation, he manifested as an angel.  As an angel should be.  He was majesty, all power and fear.  His wings were wide and they reached high.  There was great light through him (hmm, I guess he was depicted as male); and the evil in the story was overwhelmed, the human client rescued.  Afterward, he felt some contentment as an angel, though he knew he would be leaving and would be changing into whatever the next place and time required—not by his reckoning.  So he was about to leave and then—and this was the style of the writer—vanish in the middle of a–.

x

this story was written I believe by Stephen Donaldson who has composed the chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever; if I’m wrong then I apologize all around; I don’t recall the name of the anthology or the particular story cited, and I don’t know who else wrote the other stories—the theme was angels, that’s what I know and that I often think of this story, this time strongly enough to set something down

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash

x