Ash Wednesday
I.
In the East,
beyond the desert and the great mountains,
beyond the frozen lakes,
there is a Space.
On this perfect winter day
there is a crisp clear sky
above the broad snow-covered Space.
The Space is bound
by the Obelisk and the Sitting Man,
and it is Our Heart.
II.
Now the sun crowns the Obelisk.
You come upon it suddenly,
walking to the Sitting Man from the Obelisk,
passing the ice-still pond, then around the low hill
this terrible dark wound in the Space!
The soldiers sculpted from eternity
gaze toward it in wonder
this many-named signature of the God of War.
III.
One nurse compassionately cradles the blinded warrior,
a modern Pieta stanching his broken chest,
the next searches the sky for succor’s hope,
and what must lie beneath the stare of the third,
she who has beheld the deaths of so many!
Peter Ahrens
1994 revisited 2004
Nexial Quest (c) Pete Ahrens 1999 - 2012