Mark Murphey

Ode to the Angels
or It's The girl in the Attic Room Ironing

for Brian Patten

There are no angels, it's just the girl in the attic room ironing

in bra and knickers, her breasts pushing, her thighs escaping

modesty for a while. You can tell, she has no wings to speak of,

she sings no songs of heaven. She just walks about

the room on her tip toes like a ballerina, her bum cheeks taut

as newly baked bread, humming Last Year's Man.

I would go up there but for my young man's fear

of her taut cheeks, her nubile breasts. It must be a travesty

I tell myself, an illusion of girl-hood that draws me to the attic room

at four in the morning. I check myself, drink some vodka

with the salvation army choir from yesterday ringing in my head,

there simply are no angels I tell myself, no creatures of God.

Years later, my love hugs a statue of an angel in the cemetery to save

her life at St Ignatiuous' Church. I tell myself it is only marble,

but my love walks half-naked among the graves, the moonlight at her back

and suddenly I am afraid, so many years have passed

since the girl ironing in her attic room, and now I see angels

everywhere, on the high street, in the attic room, in the cemetery.