Spent from Lent
For Lent, I exercised with lots of stretching
and did my income taxes without kvetching.
I cut out booze and read my Bible daily
and even learned to play the ukulele.
Now finally our Holy Week is here,
the high point of another Christian year.
I worry: Is there hope of my sustaining
my Lenten acts? Will I now find them waning?
And what will be my spiritual prognosis
if Easter brunch I gulp down ten Mimosas?
Steven Peterson lives half the year in the middle of Chicago and the other half deep in the northwoods of Wisconsin. His poems appear in Alabama Literary Review, America, The Christian Century, Dappled Things, First Things, and elsewhere. His new collection of poetry, Walking Trees and Other Poems, is forthcoming. His plays get produced every now and then.