The Remembrance of Dust:
A poem for Ash Wednesday
Perhaps the dust remembers the first breathing; when its inner elements were infused with fire becoming suns and stars and stones and eventually Palms all evergreen in the divine embrace.
Perhaps the dust remembers
a day when it knew the blue of the sky,
the rich rootedness of earth,
from which its fronds rose tall, lithe and lovely seeking light, wafting windward
becoming the green vocal chords of the wind’s own whisper, a sacred song sounding in rustling reeds, in the piping of the Palms.
Perhaps the dust remembers the pain of sudden plucking; the shearing, cutting, trimming into a new shape tied, plaited, twisted, torn into the sign of pain, or lifted high in procession or laid low before long remembered hoof and sandalled hosanna tread.
Perhaps the dust remembers the long months of nothing; drying, dying from
green grace to brittle brown all while holding blessing, a touchstone token hallowing the halls and keeping the thresholds true.
Perhaps the dust remembers the taking down, the first lick of flame’s hungry tongue tasting its bitterness; then the crackle of dryness breaking into bits, the sudden rush of power as fire invites creation’s energies to firework heavenward in stubble sparks.
Perhaps the dust remembers the gathering, the slow grinding down of cinders, the rhythm song of the pestle, pulverising into black ashes resting in the cool marble of the mortar.
Perhaps the dust remembers the blessing, the chants, the prayers the sudden imposition of thumb to forehead the branding of another in the kinship of dust, in the coming of the kingdom.
Perhaps the dust remembers the journey from Palm to pain to ashes placed cruciform so that we too would even once, perhaps, remember that we were, and are, and will be dust.
