Spring Twilight After Penance 

Let’s say you’ve just come
From confession. Late sun
Pours through the budding trees
That mark the brown creek washing 
Itself beyond the field. 
Two men who had been mowing
The first greening grass
Have stopped to kick a ball. 
And you, let’s say, have stepped
From church gloom, the smell
Of candles blown out.
Twelve people still wait
In line along the wall.
Each still carries
Some deadweight of faults. 
Your own confessed sins, 
Venial, dull as breakfast—
Let’s say you’ve set them down. 
You’ve rattled off the First 
Joyful Mystery, kneeling
There in the hard pew.
Shriven, a new creation,
Full again of grace,
Same as last time, 
You step into the evening.
The long golden twilight
Swarms with gnats or grass-motes
Kicked up by the mowers
Which now have stopped, so that
As you unlock your car—
Trying to believe
That you have changed your life—
The only sound, anywhere,
Is the ball’s hollow thunk,
And laughter, two men joking
In a language you don’t speak. 

—Sally Thomas