The Son

After the carcass had been hung on a hook,
the boy left the barn, walked back to the house
and past his mother at the sink, then sank

into the sea of his bed. And the angel that sought
the boy was not the angel of his father’s world.
The angel found him, moved above him in silence,

and reached to touch his hand. She spread her wings
to enfold the child and pulled him down into
something like a deep-carved mine below the storm

where a heart could be made whole. The boy drowned
in his gratitude for a salvation he couldn’t seek.
At grace, his mother offered her hand for him to hold.

*

Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA Editions, 2008), Millennial Teeth (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), and two chapbooks from Unicorn Press: Of Air and Earth (2019) and Circa MMXX (2022). His poems have appeared in 32 Poems, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Five Points, The Southern Review, The Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize, as well as other journals and anthologies. He is a professor of English at Coastal Carolina University.