Love Poem: Rigel's Angel
Rob Carmack Avatar
Written by: Rob Carmack

Rigel's Angel

I see an angel fly across the sky.
She stops and haloes Rigel,
    and looks down upon me,
         with answers I already knew.

Have you come to tell me no?
You will obey me but not him?
Then you come to tell the end.
You know the river that flows therein.

It pours to and from a woman,
    from the dew of a million mornings.
It’s course is a circle and has no end,
    with the wakes of her vessel,
        drowning these eyes a deeper blue.
And as the benevolence of her intrinsics
    reach to touch perfection,
         they define my reverence,
                writing perpetual psalms.
She is as bright and profound,
     as the stars are in the heavens.

And she is just as far out of reach.
You waste these days chasing a ghost,
      and have traded allotted years in envious choices.
No life in these torrents of sin.
Its waters breach seeking itself —boasting,
      a season’s colors fallen from where they had been.

Because she belongs
     to a Libertine who’s infidelities
           run the gauntlet of durations?
Some possession to control and degrade,
      her heart he keeps in a box of lies,
            using the brine of soul and sorrow,
                 to erode grooves into her face.
Broken times before him,
    mercy he always denies,
          tell me he does not turn and smile.
Reprobated armor unscathed by the arrows of virtue,
    a given blessing sacrificed to the deceiver,
           in this season,
                  he has forfeited her to me.

You can decide what is negated,
     despite what you read in the living truth?
Righteousness is always it’s own master,
     never at the service of your exceptions.
You trespass into her covenant,
     with no regard for the sacred.
Have you forgotten David?

In her eyes, I know who I see,
     and that fool is far from Uriah—
          Give her back what I need her to give me.
How long must she suffer?
Hanged by this obligation,
     she is yoked to a corpse,
           and his weight is killing her.

The Father’s grace is more than sufficient,
      in the temporal trials that forge the soul,
           but you damn hers in every embrace.
Words that have her stumble into your bed,
    have taken days she will now not see.
You have tightened iniquity’s noose
      around her heart, 
          tearing her soul.
It is you who is killing her.

Tell me what I feel is not a truth piercing my forever!
Tell me I am not sincere in days and dreams!
Tell me that I would forsake her!
Tell me my tears are false!
Tell me I am a liar!

You lied to yourself in believing
     that love and the sins of another man,
         could make you righteous in yours.
You are a thief that has betrayed
     the truth fully convicted in your soul.
Before you filled your heart with the blood of this woman,
     the world and favor were placed at your feet.
Selfishly holding one while trampling the other,
      recklessly sacrificing your own heart,
             before this season’s end.