Gabriel

The angel-pun, of course, is the obvious
but so are babies - perhaps I’d even say
they are the obvious made manifest.
What else if not pure Being’s purest sign?
And so, like beasts or plants or furniture,
we call them It - the highest of our praises,
saying, as it does, “O blessed, reside
still within the realm of Rilkean things -
be bedded in delightful quiddity,
softly swaddled round with wordlessness of world.
Thine is our only Eden, our one pure time.
Beyond priority; before before.
And afterward - mere muddle, mess thrive here.”

But here also thy mother, thy father:
muddled by candour, messy with love.