"a voice thin with prayer"

a poem for Lent

Lenten Syllables

i.

This false spring, this un-
raveling sorrow, O God,
and these sparrows in
a mangled shrub, how they form 
a body—head gone in song. 


ii.

After a false spring 
when the sun returns to dust
and the clouds are dust,
the geese—pulled into a point—
puncture dull and blinding gray.


iii.

Gone white overnight,
the mountain presses into 
hovering gray sky.
Geese in the shape of a snapped
arrow—chant echoing chant.


iv.

As the ashen snow 
melts, gutters become dream-blurred 
mirrors reflecting  
wire-thin branches scrawled across 
traffic and a dying sun.


v. (Coda)

A voice in the night     the sound of snow 
falling through snow    a voice thin with prayer
and winter    and a memory of light 
perforated by spring    the sound of snow 
whirling around streetlights     an imagined sound
honed by the cold and held in mind     a voice 
in the night that needs no response
beyond acknowledgment    the listening
this leaning in to decipher precisely nothing.