For your young life we must withdraw a while
from all our usual gatherings; must smile
through windows, wave from porches, speak through screens;
and immured, remote, prepare as if for trial.

Trial not legal, nor of warfare feared;
trial not of love or loyalty volunteered;
trial not imposed by sin or shame; but trial 
for health, confidence of screenings cleared.

So fast from voices, fast from faces, fast from
new, and old, and known; so fast from humdrum
needful outings; friendly hands, familial hugs;
so fast before this newest life is come. 

Thus priests and kings, knights-errant, acolytes
have done for centuries. Christ, on the heights
of all the earth looked down and – fasting – cried  
“The Lord my God I worship! not these sights.”

Awake! Uncurl, my little one! Advent
to us when we have wrestled! when we assent
whole-hearted to this fast. Then unto us 
let new life come! Hushed – till then – we wait expectant.  

And you shall be like a

well-watered garden.

Like a spring of water,
a spring whose waters do not fail.