His mother must have looked away,
the reckless boy who teeters on
the railing of the balcony.
Beneath him, the congregation sings
a final hymn in a minor key.
Above, the oculus, gold leaf,
the folded wings of Gabriel.
Impossible to say what lured
him from his seat—the choir’s appeal
or the angel’s feet?
What is his name
so we might call him, safely, down—
this child who balances between
what cannot and what can be seen,
the martyrs and the marbled ground?
Advent
Michael Shewmaker
Michael Shewmaker is the author of Penumbra (2017), winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Born in Texarkana, Texas, he is the recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner fellow. His recent poems appear in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Emily.