ASH WEDNESDAY
I rise early
sit long over coffee and poems
savor every sip
every morsel and metaphor
while it lasts
for I know it will not.
I value each day now
each hour
each book or poem
each encounter
each moment with this love
with this
and this.
A stack of prunings
grows in the back yard
awaits a summer to dry
an autumn to cure
before it becomes
the blaze that warms
next year's winter dawn
and burns itself to ash.
_Donna Hardy 2009
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.
_Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 13.
