Communion Poem by Leo Yankevich

Where paint peels in the summer sun,
I sit down on the wino bench,
a sinner who must break a bun
to stay alive. I ask: whose stench

is it here, ghost or spirit come
and gone, like draughts of air beneath
the wings of mourning doves? I’m dumb
before the flowering Spanish Heath.

The beasts within my belly bay,
themselves but shadows in the dark.
Yet I am made whole by the ray
that lights the pathway in the park.