The Day Before.A Narrative Poem

In Thursday, in late morning, my angel-companion and I took a slow stroll through a yellow-red woods. The mood was wonderful, and you must grasp I have been laughing everyday, or at least smiling broadly. A mountain, dislodged from its vertical splendor, pierces the ground like a mighty arrow. River-currents swirl in figure-eights but the blue shining water is stationary. The foam of waves is tossed into the sky where it coalesces into graceful cloud-shapes. Deer speak to each other in a dialect of the forest, and lions, male and female, rest in their massive being between feedings. My mind is stumped by such alien images, but at the same time it can calculate cosmic equations. I feel no need for explanations. (Our world exists in the hinterlands of eternity.) Three blue-streaked fish plunge their heads into the air above the water line. In their bubbly voices, they encourage me to dive. "Then, we'll swim the middle depths together, " they bubble in unison. My companion angel subtly smiles but shakes his head. A tiny finch catches my eye. As soon as our gazes lock, he opens his beak and wags his tongue, hopping up and down on his narrow tree branch. I recognize him as the lone finch who visited my balcony last summer, and he cocked his head from side to side as I spoke of random things that bond bird and human. My companion angel turns away, and looks fixedly into the sky dome. I sense this walk is not the same as the Lord-God walking in the cool of the evening through Eden, talking quietly with Adam. I say impulsively, carelessly, "Tell me your name, my - " "No, Daniel." Authority is what I hear. The finch flies away. The fish submerge. I cannot speak another word, and know laughter and smiles belong to yesterday. "It's true I have spoken to you often as a friend. I admit that and say no more about it." My heart was sinking. I saw the lions vanish into the thicket. The deer ran pell-mell away from me. And high above me, I watched the cloud-shapes collapse in disarray. A chill that did not belong to morning in the woods cut through my frame. "I have foreseen your sorrow. You will be even more bereft over time. These will be hard times for you: your sadness will be swamped by your fears, and nature will not help you again. No creature, neither animal nor angel, will be able to comfort you... " In the long pause of his silence, he shimmered in and out of his angelic shape. He disappeared completely for a few seconds. Then, he stood clothed in a glorious nimbus on a mound a distance from me. The rest of what he said to me was spoken directly into my interior being. "Another War in Heaven rages even as we speak. At least three factions of angels contend in hatred and harm, eviscerating their spiritual beings. What these warring beings will become, if anything is left of them, is too terrible to foresee. I refuse to look ahead. The end will not be long in coming. Angelic beings are too sensitive for prolonged violence. The survivors of one great battle have condemned themselves to everlasting agony and yet they gloat over their victory." The angel fell silent but still held me in this thought-embrace. "This crisis may yet pass, angels may yet see the Light of their being, and cease this second War in Heaven... " I suddenly found my voice, and cried out, "Angel, Angel, hear me. You will prevail. Your beauty cannot fail - it is the being of our being, forever. ANGEL, YOU MUST DISPLAY HOPE." I felt his touch caress me as he vanished. That very afternoon, I set about building a Temple of Hope with things of the earth.