angelic ovenbird In the church with white walls I sang a wordless hymn, my voice wending its way through the maze of genuflecting congregants, bouncing off the polished floor, rising into the vault of a ceiling so high it could have been the sky. I had no hymnal and I sensed that the music was an improvised aria following the switchbacks my feet found between the pews. I reached notes I could never hope to sing in life where I am bound to the role of alto, or mezzo soprano if I stretch. But here, in the dream church, I was possessed by angels who scraped silt from my throat until my voice ran clear as glacier water. The melody fled with the grey light of morning, and I wished I could have kept it. I wanted to give it to you, sad and unfinished as it was. In sleep I had no words to accompany my song. Here I have no melodies to clothe my poems in. I am always reaching towards something beyond, and finding, again, just how small I am—wishing, futilely, for one moment of rapture. 261028 what's it to you? who go blather from