On Laetare Sunday
by Michael E. Nowicki


The middle Sunday of the mourning season
the nor'easter buried our driveway in snow.
We dug a path for Mother
whose lymphoma started blooming

Near her womb. On Laetare Sunday, I'd give her a rose
that would not die, the kind Medieval apprentices
gave to Mother church, where they first
were baptized in their Motherland

So far away. The Sunday of the Rose
Rosensonntag as the Germans say
is the Sunday I dug a path
so the cancer would not spread to marrow

Red as a rose. I think of violets
that bloom in the Spring, how painlessly
they move towards the sun. The joy
within the Lenten season

Is here. The red lights of an ambulance
seen through the snow.






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