Angels Can Vote

Their streets took some getting used to,

laid out not in grids but in spirals

so that homes and rooms

had curved walls, and going

from place to place was never

a straight line. I wondered about

their beliefs, for example,

that human thoughts affected the weather.

But what knocked the wind out of me

was their democracy.

You see, where these mortals live

angels can vote. 

This means that even a cash-

strapped underdog who refuses

to pander, and whose bite

matches his bark, can win.

No cars there.

I was on a bus reading a paper

when I said out loud,

“Holy Mackerel! The vote of a saint

counts more than a million pornographers.”

The woman in the next seat, who

wore a red kerchief and rural shoes,

looked at me. “What is a pornographer?”

I felt explaining would somehow

soil her so I asked her

to explain their elections.

It started when someone asked,

should the vote of a person of principle

count the same as one

who only wants more

of what he already has?

I remembered Tocqueville,

who said, democracy could work

until citizens decided

they could vote themselves

the largesse of the public treasury.

That was his term, largesse.

Later the same day I met

an old man with very kind

blue eyes. Spiritual beings,

he explained, can see motives

as easily as you and I can see

the cat on the windowsill.

During elections they work

really hard because each vote

gets counted first as quantity

by humans, and then

for quality by angels.

Let’s say a man is so ambitious

he’s downgraded his wife and kids

to approximately the importance

of his wardrobe. His computer

won’t recognize that,

but his angel will.                                

It’s recorded someplace,

not as number, not as text,

but as, maybe call it a color,

even though it isn’t a color.

A couple of spirals over,

the old man continued,

lives a woman with bad teeth,

who cleans other people’s houses.

Let’s just say her husband

turned out to be a disappointment,

but a certain tenacious

love has her staying with him

for the sake of the kids. Her color

ascends higher than the ambitious man’s.

Through data management

at the angelic level her vote

counts for at least three of his.

The kindly old man looked at me

as if to say: is there a better way?

Christopher Nye