On April 15th, the world watched in sadness—and sometimes in quiet song—as vast portions of Notre Dame Cathedral came down in a blaze. Many mourned the loss of a place of such history and culture. But still more mourned the loss of a great bastion of beauty in the world. Tears were shed by some who had never even visited the Cathedral (my crying-averse self hesitantly admits that I was one of them), because we

The sky is the colour of ashes—       White and grey; The eaves drip icicle tears       falling away   My life is filled with ashes,       my mood is fey; Death upon death finds my heart       falling away   Across my forehead a cross      —charcoal dust— Reminds me that my frame       will soon rust   Over the shadow of death       a Cross Reminds me that life       can flame from loss   The kernel of wheat       must die,

 What if prayer is a furnace?      When we confess, every sin and every evil thing         is burnt away into ashes.            But every prayer in line with Life and Love             —stemming from God’s Spirit—                  is refined like gold and silver.                     What if that? 

I Want a Solution    for Charlottesville, VA I want a solution but my mind offers platitudes maybe they’re enough to seal the gap the whistling cold the difference between yesterday and today in Charlottesville where others carry thoughts like a sickness that kills them first swinging their fever in censers anointing their steps with ash walking by them I try to keep quiet and pass unseen my easy answers held out of sight like

Have  not the poets said “The woods are God’s temple”? But throughout time man hath said, “The waters and woods are gods!” So they whisper in the wilderness, they shout from the mountain’s brow, raise arms in homage to the forest crown, and kneel to honour the ‘sacred’ ground Yet their precious Nature holds a scourge whipping fire-cords upon the earth; pillars of pine blaze a burnished bronze, the wood-god’s spirit spirals away in smoke

Ash Wednesday Reflections   Tonight, ashes smear Across my face From priest’s thumb— Sin’s dark drear Mingled with oil Leaves a smudge On my skin And my soul   Last year’s palms Burn deep upon My flesh and In my memory— All I see Is ashen, grey, Charred remains of Promises and dreams I peer inside At my soul Crumbling to coals Dead and lifeless— Not a spark Or an ember Of élan appears To