ASH WEDNESDAY
-for Jerry
All year I've had your ashes
here on the living room hearth
in a box artfully crafted
and lovingly finished;
it's time now to return the box
to the woodworker and return you
to the ground out of which you came.
We will bury the ashes here
in the garden where you,
over the years, dug resting places
for one small dog and another,
and keep your ashes sealed so that
when the angels come for you
at the Resurrection
they will find you all of a piece.
Everything of life points to endings
and beginnings. We live the in-between.
I hold you there. You
created one summer night on the prairie
from the rise of familiar desire; you
brought home from the hospital to
sleep four-in-a-bed in a homesteader shack;
you formed over the years
by love and hard work
and faith in the everlasting.
The box is borrowed. It's all borrowed.
We claim what we can.
I will keep your ashes in the garden
and mark them with something that grows.
—Donna Hardy March 2011
