Kathy Fagan
"God helps those who help themselves."
—peasant proverb invoked by St Joan
at her trial
So I lied & I fled & I prized
up the floorboards where necessary, yes.
For it was May then & the bells,
I kneeling in the light they made & would forever have.
But the lily was a sword with a cross inside it,
a voice in the bell of its throat.
What good I did because of them—
the rest was me.
The crucifix my confessor held so I could see
sailed like my standard, my beautiful peeling river,
Jhesus Maria blistering in the wind.
I felt I rode with it again—
times it raised me from my mount,
a vapor with arms.
Some say at the end my heart didn’t burn.
People like their stories whole.
The truth I am not given leave to know.