Ash Wednesday, Unshowered

My hair’s pulled back to disguise the grime,

though maybe it’s well that I’m unclean,
since from dust you came, to dust you will return,
the priest recites, smearing my forehead.
Once, twice, and I’m marked, a lintel in plague years.
I’m invited to kneel and read the fifty-first Psalm,
recalling how David watched Bathsheba bathe.
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Merciful one, save me from slight repentance.
I pierced the center of the white orchid, Lord,
and it was mud, blood’s cry, my body’s blighted tender.


-- Anya Krugovoy Silver (1968-2018, from Image Journal

Lent: Deformed Pussy Willow

 ————–Not the branches

we cut each
————–windy March
to hang with eggs
————–dyed red.
Not those
————–we bless
with palms
————–& smoke.
These arced
————–spines & split
limbs bud
————–through straining
bark. Backs
————–humped & bent,
bound. Does
————–God suffer
these husked
————–velvet knobs?
Stunted,
————–a wreath
of tumors.
————–Yes, he does.
Gather them
————–for procession,
for the table
————–& icon,
crown for
————–weeping Theotokos.

-- Anya Krugovoy Silver (1968-2018), from Image Journal

Image from Epic Gardening

Holy, holy, holy

For S. S.

How to love the Trinity, its vagueness,
non-sense, God talking to God on the cross? 
Theological geometry, stumper of metaphor,
God humbled to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 
Only when I heard that voice singing Our songs 
shall rise to thee did I feel a welling of love 
that, at best, visits me occasionally in prayer, 
indwelling and expanding within me. 
Yes, God, the darkness hideth thee.
Too often as I sit in the pews, nothing
happens. Or worse, Nothing happens, 
doubt a scrim over every word I pray, 
a tepid mutter of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 
But that hymn’s falsetto, surrender, the not-
knowingness of it—Lord, though I can not see, 
I did hear a shimmer, some wick in me caught 
fire, and fear, that liar, left me, momentarily, 
free in the Holy, music, the blessed Trinity. 

--Anya Silver (1968-2018), American poet