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      July 22, 2014Dilemmas of the Angels: ExtraterrestrialDavid Romtvedt

      The aliens land and at first she’s scared.
      Has her Lord been keeping secrets?
      Another wife and kids in a faraway galaxy?
       
      It would be tempting. Imagine saying,
      “Let there be light.” And, poof, there’s light.
      The magic word is any word you want it to be—
      bucket, for example, or asphalt, and into the world
      tumble jet planes, hair dryers, and vegetarian restaurants.
       
      The Mayans say God made human beings from mud 
      but when it rained they washed away and he had 
      to start over. So maybe we’re the other family.
       
      Now the aliens are stepping out of their ship
      which looks like a giant corncob painted blue.
      That’s a nice detail, she thinks—that blue.
       
      Could be these people created themselves. 
      Certainly our Lord didn’t attend so to detail.
      Here it was light, dark, firmament, seas, 
      vault of heaven—all pretty vague. It wasn’t 
      even clear whether angels have sexual organs. 
      Take that Cole Porter song—“Birds do it, bees 
      do it, even educated fleas do it.” What about angels?
       
      The problem is 
      there is no one
      before whom the Lord 
      can bow his head
      and be born again.
       
      The aliens take off their shoes and socks 
      before walking barefoot across the lawn.
      There’s something appealing about them—
      those smiles. They’re taking off their clothes, 
      space suits really, and lying down on the grass. 
      They’re wrapping their arms and legs around each other.
      They’re doing what is done to create a new being.
       
      “Hey,” she shouts, not that she’s a prude 
      but she’s been in the garden before 
      and knows that the sprinklers come on
      at dusk, which it almost is. And what if, under 
      the screen of water, they are washed away?

      from #42 - Winter 2013

      David Romtvedt

      “I’m a musician and poet. Language, meaning, and rhythm drive me in both forms—I write poems that don’t have regular meter but I’m always thinking about how the poems move when spoken. I write party dance music that is metrically very regular but I’m always thinking about using language in ways that will break free of the meter a little. My big quest now is to learn Basque, a language of great beauty that is very unlike other European languages.”