My grandmother, who used her little scale
To weigh each meal during Lent,
Would not know what to make of it.

‘What, no numbers, no sobbing,
No penance of a hundred rosaries a day
For the next month?
How can God forgive, if you were let off so
Easy?”

‘I don’t know, Granny, all I can say
Is that times,
And maybe even God, change.”

Charlene James
Amissville, Virginia