(x = spaces)

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Slow Season

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1

Lord,

It is Lent

Moving slowly as it should

Forty days or so

In a couple weeks, Palm Sunday

Triumph and then the Triduum

Days of friendship

And of torture

For our Lord

For you

Ignominy

Then death

Then in the earth

Like a seed that has no merit

As no growth is expected,

Behind a stone

In fact

Lent closes over

That way

While we wait

Not knowing

We should wait for anything

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2

Half the world is at war

My God,

What do we do to each other?

What grace is kept

Withheld

Like a body in a tomb

We’d try not to open

For fear of the revenant

We’d find inside?

Forgive us, anyway

Save us, anyway

By something so, so precious

That in the world we cannot escape

That finds us

Even though we say

Get away,

I want no part of you

Before the rooster crows

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3

And what is grace

But something sliced

Through everything

That it is as good

As if

Dispensed only through itself

No keepers on Earth

Not the church

(don’t think it)

Or the world

(won’t think it)

God’s surprise

Surprised by peace

And then delight

Don’t think it comes in

Any other way

It is wild

If there is timing,

It only knows its own

It comes to save

Better than a plan

Or pre-requirements met

Don’t ask except

To ask of it

That is all right

It can act as if it hears

The one releases

It can hear

And for our malaprops

And misinformed

Hears us, anyway

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coda

My people cry

I must respond

They ask badly

If at all

I want to hear them, anyway

I will respond

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Something like it

Says the Lord

In songs

And other prophecies

And the amazing grace

Of love

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C L Couch

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Photo by Christina van der Merwe on Unsplash

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