Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

The novice nun waits still, a candle flame.

The flame burns still.  These three are still; no, not

The column only, white, avoiding shame.

A dusk of autumn fills her with a hot

Regret unnamed.  She views a Vespers of

Her own, the chanting now long past.  She fills

Her chest and throat with words unspoken, love

Untouching, till her feeling almost spills

From clamped shut lips.  She, thus, is not quite still

Because a living body fails to be

As rigid as the blood on crosses shrill

With reverence through that buckled knee.

  That would-be saint is almost static in

    Her lungs, a moth struck through fixing pin.

~ Phillip Whidden