Enlightened
by Sandra J. Lindow
Winter is the season of repose,
a lingering meditation
of gray days when cloud eyes
lower but do not close.
Two years from chemo
and a year from reconstruction
I drive eastward toward
a break in the clouds:
Winter’s Eucharist,
life’s bright meal enclosed
between loosely woven linen sky
and wide white expanses of snow.
As a child, I shaped
manna loaves of crusted snow,
drank the wine of sky,
unaware of ten below.
In the shadow of grandfather’s
shade maple, I made altars
of cloud-earth-bread, a joyful
transubstantiation of cold.
Sixty years later in a sacrament
of sudden January light, I shed
my heavy gloves, adjust
the heat for hands and feet,
and sunlight consumes me
this winter’s day,
the broken bread of my body
eaten and made whole.
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