St. Benedict’s Hospital
Ogden, Utah
1986
Twenty-six isn’t so young.
Joan the Maiden lived to nineteen,
bald like the paschal lamb
on the red-blue flag of Rouen.
She too sought the cross at her burning.
Bishop Bowen abandons
me on Mt. Olympus—Wasatch,
not the Greek massif—to pitch
down pagan slopes of white poplar,
alone in my abyssal descent.
Our bodies will find rivers:
the Seine for the Maiden, and mine
the bank of the Grand Égout,