The Ashes of Wednesday

Freshness finds unknown spaces
within our chest walls,
unnoticed dark innocent

       untouched

Spaces perk to the touch
of freshness when
those encounters happen with a foreign

Pronoun it he she any
sounds of it
images of she
ruddy aroma of he

Brings forth freshness
In a way that literally draws breath in--
to places we wager must be nooks of the lung
somehow virgin to air

until now.

Wednesday ashes of burned
palm branches dried for nearly a year
during communal anticipation
to set those accordion necks ablaze!

O how we love to burn things!
To see that flame feel that heat,
to change something so completely

When there's so much we cannot
as it he she changes us with annoying ease!

Power sparkling bright within us
yet feeling the limited time of July's fire of rainbows
about to fall to
invisible,
 we feel the edge of madness
and shout,

"Burn!  Burn!  Burn!  At least I can burn you!"

And the ashes
get smeared on my forehead where
women of another faith
dot themselves with red dyes
from stirring sacred communal preparation.

Ashes as such once meant dirtiness to me,
innocent biological dirtiness, that is, really
light gray or black flakes of dirt

that lift

with the faintest air.

Now, today
ash is a fresh Pronoun
(even though it's so familiar and old
since my dad helped me to spell a-s-h
for that test
on wide-ruled paper)

Fresh again because the priest looked above my eyes,
his cheeks so kind in their pudginess
pressing his thumb with that burned soft blackness
a cross my forehead
repeating "Remember
you are dust and to dust you will return."

How could those kind, pudgy cheeks be so harsh?

morbid. heavy. words.
they startled my pleasantness
for a moment
I forgot those spaces existed,
had just been discovered with accidental joy!

Then air hit another space

       untouched

within the chamber walls this time
of my ear, so much closer to my mind
than the heart, and thus quite significant

When spaces of fresh faith open and
are found
so near to the skeptical waves
and doubting synapses and thin myelin sheaths and--

"I will make your life again
from those very ashes
with my hand that molded Adam
in the playful joy of children
forming castles from chaotic sands and seas."



by Troy Ahrens
Composed Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Standing Cliches

From a distance to the pond, I don't even notice the beads.  Not even the wetness of the feathers just moments ago submerged.  Sunlight mostly reveals the silhouette of features common so long now to the decoding mechanism in my visual cortex.  I've been able to recognize a duck since before I could read, since before I could say, "duck."

As I stand in the shower, I remember this moment in splices of time.  Many similar as if one.  The pond is not distinct nor the duck.  The pond could be from my childhood park in Redlands or one of the few I visited frequently around Walla Walla during my 20's.

Even if I could get a better read on the pattern and color of the duck's feathers, I would fail the Jeopardy question.  My dad would get it probably.  He spent a few years looking at birds in a field guide, combed over that book often.  Every once in awhile he sees some bird and spouts, "Green-winged Teal," or "Barn Swallow," or something the like.  He does it so nonchalantly.  So unassuming.  I get such a good laugh each time.

It is so unexpected, coming from the man I revered as a kid for stuff like a golf swing or follow-through at the foul line.  Dad knows birds?  Ha!

I restrain from the towel.  I tell myself to be still.

Stand there, Troy.  Be.  For but a moment, be.

Light drops can be heard around me.  Then I notice the cool of sensation as little swirls of air, unseen, take heat away from my skin.  I close my eyes and hear my mind associate a cliche with the dripping of water down my body: "like water off a duck's back..."

Have I ever actually seen the beads of water fall off a duck's back?

I've seen ducks come up from a dive.  I've seen light rain fall upon them as they propel.  I've seen them shake beads of water into all directions.  I can't recall ever seeing actual beads of water roll off the surface of all those interlocking, hydrophobic feathers.  I can't recall those beads hanging there on its back, even for a flash of sight.

I can't see it in my memory.

It is magic.

The stuff of the hand being quicker than the eye.

Gravity, surface tension, preening oil and intricate complexity of feathers, skeletal angles, all combine to perform an act of water off a duck's back that is invisible to me in real time.

One glance at my forearm and I see several beads.  Though I've been out of the shower's downpour for several seconds, beads.  Visible.  Glistening.  Distinct.

How optimistic cliches can be.  We tell a friend to let the stress of this or that be like water off a duck's back.  We don't want them harboring over something so significant to them and yet inevitably unresolvable by mere rumination.

"Let it whoosh off your back; be a duck, man!" we encourage.

Yet because the bead of stress is already clinging to the back of our friend's brain, the cliche fails.  Metaphorical beads upon a duck's back don't cling.  They don't hang around long enough to see, let alone ruminate upon.

But such a metaphor continues in our pull for sage advice out of love.

Why?

Maybe it is less a reflection of optimism and more the desire to bring magic into a human moment that is so heavy.  We could use some hope—the sensation that spars so well with the realist's burdens.

Sometimes, we need a cliche akin to a child's eyes.

We need wisdom, delightful—contained in the utter, believing wonder of a handkerchief vanishing from an unmoved, and now, unclenched hand.