Today's poem is by Nicholas Yingling

From the Trial of Joan of Arc
       

When the moon is much older
than you think
and the trees die soft and tomorrow

lifts from its nest of gravity
so you might break it with your hands,

finding no stars
as you have broken vows
and found only the emptiness between

rain, come to me.
Come to me when fires

drink down the night
in vain and the body is a dry fountain
burning itself out,

no one left to care
for the bones beneath your worship

and the river filling with children
who breathe
chrome from paper bags,

when your intentions, like mountains,
grow hazy by midday

in this, our city of boundaries.
Come when exhaust sleeps
in the laurel and these arms in their restraints

curl out like a candelabrum,
each IV hole black

as a wick burnt down. Softly
you may blow into them:
small prayers against darkness.

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Copyright © 2024 Nicholas Yingling All rights reserved
from The Fire Road
Barrow Street Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission