A little Lenten story

Bundled into the car by night to avoid the crowds
(it didn’t always work; there was that time
when the silver scales of traffic sat basking
for hours between the impossibly bright sky
and the impossibly black tarmac;
with sticky feet we wandered the motorway,
weaving between overheated motors
to the ice cream van that had opened its awning,
yawning for customers before
the freezer gave out),
under the observant lens of Venus,
following the isthmus until day, when all around us
we would see the sea: the brine of God’s womb,
the animistic fluid of creation.