Lament

by M. Doretta Cornell, RDC

An early Easter, spring barely elbowing out last week’s frost.

The ash tree buds are visible only as the raindrops rest on them.

Tips of ginger betray the coursing life in the trees on the hills.

And what new life is making its way through my winter heart?

What walls of ice are melting, letting in hope, a glimpse of what

seemed impenetrable, desire for new ways of doing the old and new?

What are we to do in this time? Where are doors closed

to the compassion that bursts past sin and evil and death? How

choose which need is greatest, assess which we could meet?

Mother Veronica’s choice looks simple in our time: the children,

of course, little girls abandoned to the streets, then their older sisters.

We don’t hear the myriad other cries she could have answered.

Or can we learn to see all the ways we do serve through one lens,

Compassion: the all-embracing desire of God for all our Earth,

all of us on it to be one, to know ourselves loved, to love each other?