Ash Thursday

He did the yearly black solemn ritual

and got smeared  and humbled though he

didn’t like it much with the flecks falling down

in his eyelashes and the soul’s grief exposed so

He got home and stared at his conundrummed face

for five minutes give or take in the bathroom mirror

it wrecked him to be so humiliated, so mortified

he washed away the ashen cross and dreamed of dying

He woke up Thursday and after peeing and scratching

looked in the mirror and there it was like a Mardi Gras drunken tattoo

his forehead graffitied, black, sooty,

haunting him he wore it all day like an unbandaged wound

At bedtime that night he washed and slept like a storm-tossed boat

woke up to his sunrise reflection, his sleet eyes squinted

again it was back, his skin tagged with midnight streaks

and he walked the day mortal through to his marrow

After that first Ash Thursday and Ash Friday

and Ash Tomorrow, Ash Next Week

Ash March, Ash Autum, Ash Solstices

never a day went by when he didn’t see it, let it have its way

Never a day went by thereafter that he didn’t

rise to bless himself with Wednesdays words:

remember you are dust and to dust you shall return

and every day then on he was his free earthy self until he died