The Imposition of Ashes
Let the sky break
into bone. I will stand
unshaken in the hollow
of this weather
holding my own
hand upward, lake-
ward. I will empty
the rain. I will refuse
to. I will believe if
a god of my own
making awakens to
thunder into a heaven
that’s never a place.
I will believe there are
no directions but if and if
I believe, it is
in the god of
the space between
my body and my self
in sleep, in the ragged black
ash of my own breath.
