Angel’s Trumpet

At the corner of the garden

brash blossoms as big as my head

fill the sprawling datura.

Are those exuberant upside-down flutes

yellow or orange? I don’t know –

they’re sunshine, egg yolks,

fresh churned butter

from a happy, meadow-grazing cow. 

All day long they hang like unrung bells

till setting sun coaxes a farewell,

cascades of perfume flowing 

over the garden as if a band of angels

had been keeping vigil just to trumpet

this sun-washed scented goodbye —

no desire to hold darkness at bay,

instead, a vespers explosion

of thank you,

bless us, adieu.

Come moon, come stars now,

roses and rhubarb await their rest,

kohuhu and calla lilies too.

Come, my love, to our pillows and bed.

The window stands open,

my arms await you.

So you think angels are fiction;

come sail on their fragrance

into sleep with me anyway.

Let your REM-induced

atheist reveries mingle

with my hermit dreams

and what we both believe in,

roses and rhubarb,

kohuhu and calla lilies,

the garden we tend

and that tends us too.

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Mary Camille Thomas

Mary Camille Thomas is a native of Santa Cruz who is grateful to make her home on the California coast once more after living internationally and on the road. She studied comparative literature at UC Davis and received a master’s degree in library science from UCLA, which gave her a way to earn a living while making a life among books. Her poetry and essays have appeared in the Monk in the World Guest Post Series, Moving Force Journal, Presence, Porter Gulch Review, Second Wind, Sisters Singing, and The New Story, and she has completed a novel called What Lies Buried about a man reckoning with his family’s Nazi past.

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