Childhood Elegy

If our angels hover above us,

they will see a darkening cornfield, the spectral traces

of lightning bugs, and two brothers

lying among the stalks. 

We come because sometimes it is hard to live.

The cornstalks, limp under the tropical sun,

revive in the cool of twilight.

The angels will know we have been here for hours.

They will land and rest their feathers around us

and whisper soothing names of winged things: finch, monarch,

whippoorwill, ptarmigan, Daedalus, Icarus, Gabriel...

The angels will bend down and touch their faces

onto ours and borrow our eyes: Earlier,

a horse slipped, breaking its leg. 

A boy stood beside his younger brother.

Their father came into the stable, carrying a gun.

Quails flitted out of a bamboo tree; the boy

traced the trail that had led him here,

the field tilled by the dead horse,

where his brother laid down,

dust on his cheeks.    

-  by Joseph O. Legaspi 

Joseph O. Legaspi was a visiting faculty member for the 2011 Jackson Hole Writer's Conference.