the crowd gathers in,
eager, excited, waiting
for the arrival
of the champion.
All articles filed in poems for lent
holy saturday
we planted the peas today
rolled their plump green bodies
into the black bacterial dust
gardeners call inoculant
and then tucked them one by one
under the soil
good friday
today the warmth returned
and the blond-haired boys were
running wild through beds
of brittle hydrangea
and barren rose canes
when the littlest
still unsteady on his feet
caught his teddybear bib on a thorn
maundy thursday
we’ve had a cold snap again
frost nipping the eager blooms
of the japanese magnolias
and kissing the bricks
that weight the blanket
stretched over the half-moon bed
of drowsing flowers
the dying snows
yesterday morning the newly-fallen flakes
lay large and lacy atop the earlier shroud of snow
ash wednesday
when i woke the snow
was once more falling
winter’s blight
what once was whole has now been riven
and the guilty soul bows to be shriven