Tuesday Poem: Previously published in Claiming The Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women's Poetry, ed. Marilyn Sewell, Beacon Press 1994

 
Painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage 1879

Jeanne d' Arc

The best thing

was when the voices told

her to dress like a boy,

and stepping out of

the homespun skirts, her long

hair in heaps on the floor,

she put on the armor and knew

it would protect her

from rough hands,

from then on becoming her

skin : silvery scales

hardened over her tenderest

places, and she would never have to

be tender again,

not even when the fire,

trying to consume her, curled

every cell black, sent them flying

up through the air, so many

butterflies she watched

circle away and come back

to enclose her again.

So be it, she said,

for eternity encrusted in angels

darkly whispering: Yes.