The Imposition of Ashes

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

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.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017