BY LAWRENCE “MACK” HALL

Winter arrives, they say, at 8:31

And how do they know? The light doesn’t change

The soft pale light filtering through the fog

Upon the grey-brown fields who have fallen asleep

While we speak of lockdowns and rollbacks and deaths

And plan for the least-attended Christmas Mass

The fields and forests hardly speak at all

Only in their prayerful whispers of the Eternal

Time is  told to us by the sun, moon, and stars –

And all the seasons arrive in God’s good time