(after my friend responds to my assertion that “I don’t believe in angels”)

I believe in the Old Testament angels who came to earth
and had babies with the ladies

I believe in the short-armed God whose reach
concedes his grasp

I believe in the adder’s eggs
hatching into prophecy

and a blessed dark spider who spins
the double-decker web by my door

I believe in the woman whose seven resurrected
husbands will ignore her forever

and the neighbor who mows my lawn
as he would have his mown

and his barefoot neighbor who sets
our bushes on fire each fall

I believe in their thick-tongued leaves
magenta with flame

what he tells me of his wife, her angelic laugh,
her thin, gossamer hair, and how she is gone