Re: Lent

Lent – that time when waves
recede from the headland of rock

and detritus investments in
the mortal means to happiness

ebb from each touch and purchase
on the firmament of daily survival.

We scurry across beaches reduced to
sand and sunbathing environments

the occasional love affairs – sunsets
on sanguine waves suggesting

life in the Bahamas and red wine
on a porch facing true north.

And having forsaken everything
for a fraction of time we can

return like the returning tourist
fresh from the hovels of abstinence

singing the revival of the latest religion
in the church political choir.

I am thy retail life and thou shall have
no other fashion gods before me.

Do this in remembrance of the prosperity
which you dream of and credit to me.