Fear of Angels

for S. S.

"Don't say goodbye. 
Have you heard the one about 
the …?"—a veteran of World War II, he's broke, 
a retired bank teller who makes up stories 
about his days as Chair 
of the Board. He's crazy. Yesterday he parked

on the grass and waved a pistol at children in the park. 
Now, squeaky clean, skin smooth as a baby's, 
he lies on his back in fluorescent light—dizzy, the visitors' chairs 
flashing by like vertigo, his heart broken. 
Afraid of heights, he won't look out the seventh-story 
window. He hates his shell-shocked self, and its bouts

of insanity. He talks about 
old days in Boston: geese he fed in the park, 
and brunch with his wife at the Ritz. No one knows the real story. 
Maybe a stranger walking by 
saw it through a window: a woman's bruised face, broken 
dishes on the floor, overturned chairs …

Sometimes, it's as if a wild angel who wanted to throw chairs
or kick down doors in a past life, enters his body, causing it to lurch about 
the room, breaking 
things: a vase of poppies by 
the bed. He swings his crutch as if it were a baseball bat in the park. 
As if this were someone else's story.

But it's not. It's his story. 
Each night, in a tranquilized haze, he falls asleep in his chair, 
and dreams about 
Okinawa: the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill—crewmen killed by 
smoke, molten metal dripping from the ceiling, and gasoline—the parked 
planes blazing on the deck above, silver bodies shattered, wings broken.

Or were those the silver bodies and broken 
wings of angels? He wakes and can't remember the story. 
Something about a statue in the park: 
an alabaster angel, its chipped wings hovering over wrought-iron chairs 
chained to cement. After the war, he thought too deeply about 
himself as he sat there—a bald man, wearing a gray sweater. By

midnight, he was no one. Or part of a story about a man 
who sat all night on a chair in the park, his thoughts 
unbroken by dreams, strangers, angels, or light.