Imposition (June 2024 - High Sierra Trail)

Soot smeared across my leg 
as I climbed over the burned-out log
ever seeing but not perceiving, I swept at the mark,
staining my fingers and stirring my memory:

“Dust you are and to dust you shall return.
Repent and believe the Gospel.”
I say these words each Ash Wednesday as my thumb
traces black crosses on the foreheads of the faithful. 

Now ashes have been imposed on me
and the ancient call to humility proclaimed 
by a prophet called wildfire and the 
blackened trees along this trail. 

With this memento mori, I begin my personal Lent,
a wilderness pilgrimage and nature’s catechesis.
The Spirit who renews the face of the earth
now renewing me, speaking through the trail:

“Repent of speed over sight,
completion over contemplation.
Slow to stillness and notice, listen. 
Behold the love inscribed in the Creator’s art.”

I am a slow learner. I stay for minutes 
at the lake where I was told to stay days.
I take photos of plants and creatures I say I’ll
identify later, at some more opportune time.

New every morning is my need to repent,
to attend, to be instructed in the mysteries:
the sermons of the gnarled trees, the hymn
of the singing stones, the stain of ash that will not wash away.  

One day, in the third month of this pilgrimage, 
I wade into the lake, immerse myself in the cold,
and emerge to find myself in a cathedral of granite
and pine, glacier and grass, sky and sun. I pray:

O You who formed us from the dust of the ground, 
breathe into my nostrils the breath of life. Make me
a living being, make me a living being, make this
dust and ash and dust and ash into a being fully alive.