Ash Wednesday

 

Ash Wednesday

 

You don’t climb out of poverty so much as carry it with you.

           

                                    Christian Wiman

                                    The Parable of Perfect Silence

 

Remember the line of faithful the line of un

faithful & who an really say don’t

we go in for the scrape of it on our faces,

& how the paste it has been rendered

 

into by the heat & press against the ablution

cup, the thumb up on the constant flow

of skin the mingle of it all & this is just

the beginning isn’t it, a purgatorial

 

assent/descent into attention to our lack

of being completely compassionate a call out in ash

the slash between a little above the eye

brows tell the world this is your

 

practice right?  Tell the world the bow

of you is prowing the air these next weeks

will be more or less Jesus mor or less

famine & more or less attention to famine

 

& the skin’s yet clinging to the home of you

& your bones are going out doubting but

going out none-the-less broken congregant

you are, last years Passion in ash

 

on your face, in the rain you tip to when

you leave the queue, making veins

of grey stain the nautilus of your nose

& the territory of your mouth, closed,

 

open, closed, open to taste the beginning

of penance.