A Poet Reflects

Many are making love.  Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing
are braiding one another’s hair, which is strawberry blond
and the texture of cold rivers.  They glance
down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy—
it must look to them like featherless birds
splashing in the spring puddle of a bed—

—Robert Hass, opening lines to “Privilege of Being” in Human Wishes (The Ecco Press, 1989)