Interview with the Archangel

This poem was written for Father Paul Mayer, a skinny grayhaired angel of gentle pacific compassion and enormous courage in fighting injustice, a hero of peace who made the "tough choices," especially in his service to children who have endured war. I had a vision of interviewing Gabriel the Archangel in the heavenly barracks, cleaning the sword that both destroys and differentiates as he muses about Paul.

He could put it in a rack,
Display it, all the good it did.
But he just held the great sword slack
As a hand on a fine dog's head.

Michael...front page a Testament ago,
First round choice among the Host.
In the barracks of the spirit, know
He'd be, is, top gun, that most

Genetic "angel with a flaming sword."
"That's me," he says, "and Mayer's mine.
'Protect and guide,' sayeth the Lord,
'The warrior souls are always thine.'

He stirs it, and your hair erects,
A slow dark fin sinks undersea.
"Relax," he says, "Special effects.
It's just a metaphor - like me."

And he gives you that look.
"See: the point's dull, the sides sharp.
If this Discriminator just took lives
I'd trade it for a fucking harp.

What it does is make things go.
It slices numbness into choice
And makes a way of yes or no.
It gives to God some hands, a voice.

Mayer now...hurt chose him, so
He chose it back, and made it part.
Sheep or goats, ahimsa/himsa,
It's in the wrist. And in the heart.

You have to do it every day,
Go back in or lose the touch.
Now my man Paul..." He looks away.
"I usually don't talk this much.

I've stared my share of dragons down
But he's looked in the eyes of worse -
War's kids, and what they've known...
You want a hero? See a nurse.

Let Mayer know, in that terrain
Of terror, of the simple brutal sword,
He's got backup on the spirit plane
In legions, legions of the Lord!"

Michael grins, and the air thins
As if a giant eagle's wings had fluffed.
Archangelically proud of human grit,
Of Gandhi, Whitman, all who've toughed

It, soldiered peace with kind eyes
Open, gripped the blistering rod
Of power though it closed off simple Paradise
And drove us out to earn our God.