Wednesday Dark

The ashes do not lie. 
—Rev. Whitney Miller

A friend in the Rothko chapel reflects 
on the darkening mind of the artist
whose blocks of deep purple merge 
with black, foreshadow the artist’s suicide.

In the Assumption Chapel at St. Charles Center, 
across the Sabine in Louisiana, we hear 
homilies on death this Ash Wednesday 
while beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows 
the swamp around us darkens:

first shades of gray and charcoal 
drape cypress, then deepen night. 
Slow and steady as the tortoise 
of Aesop’s fable, the dusk etches 
Lenten ashes on our brows.