Crocuses purple the lawn in Lenten array.
Surrounded by dead, dry leaves of last year, they
insist upon spring, despite the morning frost.
My prayer is ice –
How long, O Lord?

The days become lighter,
but the news grows heavy;
my morning prayer, sunlit, turns
to fire and ashes on my lips –
My God, my God.

The lake has melted. Sand and shale
strewn by the winter floes litter the beach.
I pick out the pebbles that hint at a heart
of stone. My prayers are rocks
thrown heavenward;

yet, he said one day,
picking his way over cobbles and coats,
palm branches on a colt, “If these
were silent, the stones would shout out,”
as though he who had heard the rubble
would hear me, after all.

This poem first appeared at The Episcopal Cafe