Ash Wednesday: Trusting in the Sun

It will return. It is returning. Six o’clock and already the winter candle light is not a sharp circle on the table.

It was a tough winter, a tough fall. Four dead, my own new scars, the surprise of seventy years.

I’m needing morning bird song—a robin, a cardinal. I’m needing good news. And today the reversal—just as the sun

is warming through the wind, as the maples are giving their juice, my old religion makes it Lent. Well, all right.

If the meat is gone, I might as well fast. Someday again, days will be longer than nights. I just have to wait.