The Lenten Moon: La Luna Cuaresmal, Una Oracion

How strange it is
To fall in love each year
With the same melancholy stranger
Of a season… These are the opening lines of The Lenten Moon, a collection of nineteen poems that journey back to a time and a season that the poet first encountered as a child, a season imbued with darkness, mystery, and memory. One wonders how Lent, the melancholy stranger, the season that holds in its heart a crown of thorns, untold sorrow, and gruesome death, can evoke love.

The poet, in this, her fourth collection, poses a similar question, and then seamlessly, under the guidance of the Lenten moon, takes us on a journey that ultimately concludes with our own individual discovery. One need not be a follower of any religion or ideology, a believer or adherent of any faith, to come along. The Lenten moon in the night sky, the poet assures us, transcends time and space and the differences we think separate us. We all walk in its light; we are all a part of the story.