Ash Wednesday in a Hard Winter

Milkwhite in his alb and still as this temple,

The priest waits with the stone patience of a heron.

I approach in the deadfall of midafternoon,

Flotsam blown in out of the snow-harrowed day.

He stabs once, twice, raking my cold brow

With the stiff bill of his ash-black thumb.

“Remember, man, thou art dust . . . ”

His cello voice, half altar, half mountain,

Groans more than speaks my name and blame.

Stabbed and marked, I make my way to a back pew.

Here, the act seems mere calligraphy-

Cross and death and their one-day shadow.

Meanwhile I relax, regarding the solemnities

Of stained glass and enjoying the hearth-fire warmth.

Oh yes, a fierce winter for us and worse for the beasts.

Where is the mercy, I ask, in this season

Of bird-killing ice and tree-snapping wind,

This bitter winter made by the Maker of All Things?

But the heron priest has pressed the answer

Onto and into my everyman brow.

Murmur as I may, I know that this bitter time,

As all bitter things, was made by me

When I walked, winter innocent, in the old garden

And plucked in summer joy the ash-bearing fruit.