By Joyce Schmid
I saw an angel in my bathtub,
halo lighting up the place.
She had my sister’s face—
chalcédony-and topaz eyes,
round-nostriled nose, hair
dressed with fourteen-karat gold.
She flapped and fluttered with abandon
like a robin in a birdbath,
washing off her death and resurrection,
dripping out a secret code
to tell me spring would come again for me
as it had come for her..
Joyce Schmid’s poems have recently appeared in Salt, Passager, Bridport Prize Anthology 2023, The New Ohio Review, and other journals and anthologies. Her chapbook, “Natural Science,” is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. A grandmother and psychotherapist, she lives with her husband of over half a century in Palo Alto, California.