Once during the last tick of the eve
I crossed the gate
of Miguel de Benavides
and pathed to the basalt shelf
where the French tome
laid.
‘Jeanne d’Arc,’
it was written on the foremost page,
and I had felt her
speak to me
with a gentle voice.
She intrigues me.
“Providence and the saints Michael,
Margaret, and Catherine,”
a cursive text implied.
“Halfway to my bittersweet life,
I met them
and from the depths of my heart
they announced my fate.”
What fate?
I happened to ask.
“Defender of France,”
The ink and oil begged for keen eyes;
metal on metal, it was,
for a rusted breastplate
and a pair of glorified shoulderguards,
smithed in the city of Tours
by King Charles VII,
concealed what was once
a peasant’s doublet–
one that could rival
even the grandest Englishman’s
livery.
The lady, whose dented helmet
denied her beige hair
from the storms,
hailed from Domrémy.
Now, she stood among
the soil of Orléans;
her hundred-25 pound body sustained
by trousers so tight and collapsed steel boots
and her waist sleeved by a paneled skirt
adorned with the insignia of France
and lacerated on one side.
Alas, the banner she bore in one hand;
a white linen cloth with fleur-de-lis tapestry
enclosed by Christ’s divine judgment,
and the sword of St. Catherine
on the other
carved a thousand year’s worth
of Catholic prestige.
I closed the opus and pathed
to the arch of the centuries
with a graced heart. F – Franz Zoe Stoelzl T. Baroña
