On Ash Wednesday, rain drums a quiet mercy.
John comes home, forehead smudged in a black cross.
A week later, cherry trees bloom in South Philly,
buds fat with wanting though it is not yet spring.
I walk and count each ready shoot: plum, pear,
red tip, daffodil. Already crocuses are spent;
yellow forsythia nearly faded to forget-me-not.
White and pink are whimsies. No time to think—
just be. Sixty-five today, frost tonight, dead blossoms
in the gutter by morning. On the stoop of the bakery
by St. Paul’s, a grandfather laughs and lays a match
to a pastel wrapper freed from an amaretto cookie.
All around him, small hands drop crumbs; children stare
bewondered as the fiery paper snakes through the air,
becomes a burst of nothing—no color, not even ash.
“Lent” originally appeared in MEAD: The Magazine of Literature and Libation.