“Plumb Line” — An Ash Wednesday Poem

PLUMB LINE

Plagues renamed virus have scrawled themselves

script-like as a serpent across the history of the globe. 

Countless afflictions go untold. 

We have walls of stone in homeless woods, dividing

hillsides, crumbling.  We have cock-eyed door frames,

kitchens on a tilt once true to the testing angle. 

The trees will bud, but we worry if they will bud,

then fear they have budded too soon. 

Work remains, and toil.

Our lives speak only by their smallness:  offered kiss

of a child; checkered will of a child; unsolicited gift

of a lover’s smile.  Make solid all that will always change—

You, who hates nothing you have made.

-Ash Wednesday, 2020