Angels Never Know

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When low black clouds in the morning open up
to a patch of robin's-egg blue and cumulus piles
pink from rays come a hundred million miles,
you know it's just an atmospheric hiccup.

Still, you can't help imagining angels there,
that hatchway in the clouds their attic door.
Pink fluff insulates our ceiling, their floor,
and the sunbeams slant like a drop-down stair.

The angels climbing up where Jacob dreamed
on a bed of rock -- so many years before he saw
again his cheated, furious brother, Esau --
were occupied in routine work it seemed.

Perhaps they carried relics to be stored --
a jar, a ram's horn, Rachel's wedding dress --
while Jacob sweated in the dark, sleepless,
and up there, supervising, was the Lord.

Then, down here, what moves Jacob to this place
in later years to beg to be forgiven?
The angels never know the real heaven
is Jacob wrapped in Esau's embrace.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I've revised this several times since I posted it. Carried along by the feeling and the rhymes, I had alluded to events that don't occur in Genesis until after Jacob sees that ladder. I'd even included the ark of the covenant from Exodus to rhyme with "dark." I hopefully certify this poem free of anachronisms. (01/11/2023) - WSS