Jacob's Angels by Roy Beckemeyer

The Jacob's Dream, by Marc Chagall, 1977.

Jacob's Angels
 
Angel circus act? What else would
he dream on the way from Beersheba?
Maybe it was some bad well water?
Or the Negev heat? The rocks for pillows?
But there they were: angel acrobats (easy,
with wings), gymnasts (wings as balance
beams), contortionists (wings a definite
disadvantage).
 
If you think a lot of them fit on the head
of a pin, just imagine loading a ladder
with cherabim (chorists), seraphim
(spotlights), archangelistas (all dolled
up like Ziegfield girls), one per rung,
others hovering about, traffic jam of them.
All excusing themselves. "Pardon." "So
sorry." "A bit busy today, eh?" "Gets worse
as you go higher."
 
Poor Jacob, suddenly sitting up, rubbing
at the sleep in his eyes, shaking his head,
while, in the back-ground, angels are tugging
on that ladder, gesticulating, giggling,
and Jacob looks up just a second too late
to see the last rung sliding up,
up, into the cumulus.
 
Roy Beckemeyer
 
Roy Beckemeyer is from Wichita, Kansas. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals including The Midwest Quarterly, Kansas City Voices, The North Dakota Review, and  I-70 Review, and in anthologies such as "Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems," (Woodley Memorial Press, 2011) and "To the Stars through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga," (Mammoth Press,2012).  Two of his poems were nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize competition. His debut collection of poems, "Music I Once Could Dance To," published in 2014 by Coal City Review and Press, was selected as a 2015 Kansas Notable Book Award by the State Library of Kansas and the Kansas Center for the Book.