Ash Wednesday

by Sharon Klander

From an etched bowl of burned palms this quick
brow-smudge, as if faith could grow from blurred lines
or from words learned for small foil stars.
I once wore a cross like forgiveness itself, without ashes or
asking. But now the days split into lists of faults
and I call each sin by name. All I promise
is a child's intention, knowing how ashes cling longest
to an unclean surface. I pray my bones flash silver --
a glint in God's eye -- as they fall to the earth.
These coarse, gray marks, dry and loosened,
blown upward in a wing's last turn.

"Ash Wednesday" was first published in St. Luke's Journal of Theology, volume 30, March 1987. (The Rev. Jeff Walker submitted it without asking the author.) Sharon Klander's most recent honoring is as First Place in Poetry in the 1999 New Letters Literary Awards, an international competition.