Note: This is the poem with which I ended last year’s Lent poem project (The Psalm 37 Menagerie). It also proved a fine and fitting end for this year’s The Strange Sum of Things.
FORTY
the sky is falling,
horizon on fire,
all that can be shaken
is rattling at a higher frenzy
since these forty days began–
span of the rainfall
over the floating menagerie,
of the desert-waiting
with the wild beasts,
of the unknown fate
on the terrible mountain.
when Lent has spent
its seeping sorrow and I
am lost with help long overdue,
I calm myself and
once again choose You.