40
Forsake chocolate, pizza, sugar
forty days, forty nights
sounds like snap fingers
and it is over
counted day by day
hours of deprivation endless
whine about self-sacrifice
Lent—I’ve done them all.
Forty orphans nearby
abandoned lambs—
mission church springs up
to share Easter joys
volunteers for the plan
I get knitting 40 baskets
my Lenten task, time donation
during my busy days
one a night
Row counts, color patterns
forty slows evenings as yarn
flows through my fingers
stitch by stitch, knit-purl
Jesus in the wilderness
Noah afloat
Israelites’ desert years
My hands tire, but
tightly knit baskets
sacrifice gives time reflection
a gift for the children
and this knitter.
day made
This is the day—
faint gleams of first light
cuckoo rouses, cries ko-el
night bloomers, moon-white,
scent fades
a minute more of sleep
the hard bed disallows
eyes open
to the door’s sunlit square
of awaken
ko-el, ko-el resounds
to the world of morning
radiant, full
—that the Lord has made.
Poet Victoria Crawford currently lives in Thailand and attends a small mission church inclusive of many nationalities. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Time of Singing, Parousia, The Lyric, Postcard Poems and Prose and anthologies like Missing Persons: reflections on Dementia.
Heart of Flesh Literary Journal 
Thank you, Victoria, for bringing me back to Chiang Mai, Thailand, where Nature is always up close and personal. You also bring back childhood years when the question “What are you giving up for Lent?” became an echoing chant in the desert of prayer and fasting.
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