Friday My Town Shoot-Out: Angels

The idea of the My Town Shoot-Out is to post photos of your local community every Friday. This week's assignment was chosen by Kim from Chicago.

Photo taken in Corvallis, Oregon.

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a healthy happy new year!

Well at last I get to share a favorite poem illustrating a favorite photo taken in St. Mary's cemetery on the top of Witham Hill in Corvallis. This person-sized angel watches over the grave of sweet Alma Pastega, who painted the earliest Christmas display figures in the series of photos from last week, and who died at age 90 last year.

Angels by Maurya Simon

Who are without mercy,
Who confide in trumpet flowers,
Who carry loose change in their pockets,
Who dress in black velvet,
Who wince and fidget like bats,
Who balance their haloes on hatracks,
Who watch reruns of famine,
Who powder their noses with pollen,
Who laugh and unleash earthquakes,
Who sidle in and out of our dreams
Like magicians, like childhood friends,
Who practice their smiles like pirates,
Who exercise by walking to Zion,
Who live on the edge of doubt,
Who cause vertigo but ease migraines,
Who weep milky tears when troubled,
Whose night sweats engender the plague,
Who pinion their arms to chandeliers,
Who speak in riddles and slant rhymes,
Who love the weak and foolhardy,
Who lust for unripe persimmons,
Who scavenge the fields for lost souls,
Who hover near lighthouses,
Who pray at railroad crossings,
Who supervise the study of rainbows,
Who cannot blush but try,
Who curl their hair with corkscrews,
Who honeymoon with Orion,
Who are not wise but pure,
Who behave with impious propriety,
Who hourly scour our faces with hope,
Whose own faces glow like radium,
Whom we've created in our own form,
Who are without mercy, seek and yearn
To return us like fossilized roses
To the wholeness of our original bloom.