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Angels of the Half-Spans
It is a world of half-bridges,
of rivers and canyons only half-spanned,
of blue clouds and white sky
and snippets of wind-blown music.
It is a mecca for lemmings and lovers,
an eyrie for the gliding angels.
True flight is denied them, and their haloes
are visible only in the infrared.
At moments of impending suicide
they cease to be statues in their lacunae,
their protean vessels ripple and come to life.
Like condors of another world
embracing thermals, their membranes
thrumming with soft music,
they pluck the falling from the spaces
at bridges' end. And the saved
remember nothing but their epiphanies,
their new and poignant purposes,
as they who had intervened
return to their bridges and become stone -
they who had fallen to this world
through wormholes of black despair.
Copyright 2000, Keith Allen Daniels. All rights reserved.